Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

Wonders of the Yellowstone

in Scribner’s Magazine

The Ascent of Mount Hayden

in Scribner’s Magazine

VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS
THE PIONEERS OF THE ROCKIES
THE MAKERS AND MAKING OF MONTANA AND IDAHO

By

Nathaniel Pitt Langford

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

1912

Copyright, 1890.

By NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD.

All Rights Reserved.

COPYRIGHT,

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

1912

W. G. Hull Printing Company

Chicago

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

THE MEMORY OF THOSE

Unknown Pioneers

WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN LAYING

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE

Empire

OF THE

New Great West.

“One of the chief temptations of the Devil is that he can persuade a man that he can write a book, by which he can achieve both wealth and fame.”—Cervantes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

It is stated on good authority, that soon after the first appearance of Schiller’s drama of “The Robbers” a number of young men, charmed with the character of Charles De Moor, formed a band and went to the forests of Bohemia to engage in brigand life. I have no fear that such will be the influence of this volume. It deals in facts. Robber life as delineated by the vivid fancy of Schiller, and robber life as it existed in our mining regions, were as widely separated as fiction and truth. No one can read this record of events, and escape the conviction that an honest, laborious, and well-meaning life, whether successful or not, is preferable to all the temporary enjoyments of a life of recklessness and crime. The truth of the adage that “Crime carries with it its own punishment” has never received a more powerful vindication than at the tribunals erected by the people of the northwest mines for their protection. No sadder commentary could have stained our civilization than to permit the numerous and bloody crimes committed in the early history of this portion of our country to go unwhipped of justice. And the fact that they were promptly and thoroughly dealt with stands among the earliest and noblest characteristics of a people which derived their ideas of right and of self-protection from that spirit of the law that flows spontaneously from our free institutions. The people bore with crime until punishment became a duty and neglect a crime. Then, at infinite hazard of failure, they entered upon the work of purgation with a strong hand—and in the briefest possible time established the supremacy of law. The robbers and murderers of the mining regions, so long defiant of the claims of peace and safety, were made to hold the gibbet in greater terror there than in any other portion of our country.

Up to this time, fear of punishment had exercised no restraining influence on the conduct of men who had organized murder and robbery into a steady pursuit. They hesitated at no atrocity necessary to accomplish their guilty designs. Murder with them was resorted to as the most available means of concealing robbery, and the two crimes were generally coincident. The country, filled with cañons, gulches, and mountain passes, was especially adapted to their purposes, and the unpeopled distances between mining camps afforded ample opportunity for carrying them into execution. Pack trains and companies, stage coaches and express messengers, were as much exposed as the solitary traveller, and often selected as objects of attack. Miners, who had spent months of hard labor in the placers in the accumulation of a few hundreds of dollars, were never heard of after they left the mines to return to their distant homes. Men were daily and nightly robbed and murdered in the camps. There was no limit to this system of organized brigandage.

When not engaged in robbery, this criminal population followed other disreputable pursuits. Gambling and licentiousness were the most conspicuous features of every mining camp, and both were but other species of robbery. Worthless women taken from the stews of cities plied their vocation in open day, and their bagnios were the lures where many men were entrapped for robbery and slaughter. Dance-houses sprung up as if by enchantment, and every one who sought an evening’s recreation in them was in some way relieved of the money he took there. Many good men who dared to give expression to the feelings of horror and disgust which these exhibitions inspired, were shot down by some member of the gang on the first opportunity. For a long time these acts were unnoticed, for the reason that the friends of law and order supposed the power of evil to be in the ascendant. Encouraged by this impunity the ruffian power increased in audacity, and gave utterance to threats against all that portion of the community which did not belong to its organization. An issue involving the destruction of the good or bad element actually existed at the time that the people entered upon the work of punishment.

I offer these remarks, not in vindication of all the acts of the Vigilantes, but of so many of them as were necessary to establish the safety and protection of the people. The reader will find among the later acts of some of the individuals claiming to have exercised the authority of the Vigilantes, some executions of which he cannot approve. For these persons I can offer no apology. Many of these were worse men than those they executed. Some were hasty and inconsiderate, and while firm in the belief they were doing right, actually committed grievous offences. Unhappily for the Vigilantes, the acts of these men have been recalled to justify an opinion abroad, prejudicial to the Vigilante organization. Nothing could be more unjust. The early Vigilantes were the best and most intelligent men in the mining regions. They saw and felt that, in the absence of all law, they must become a “law unto themselves,” or submit to the bloody code of the banditti by which they were surrounded, and which were increasing in numbers more rapidly than themselves. Each man among them realized from the first the great delicacy and care necessary in the management of a society which assumed the right to condemn to death a fellow-man, and they now refer to the history of all those men who suffered death by their decree as affording ample justification for the severity of their acts. What else could they do? How else were their own lives and property, and the lives and property of the great body of peaceable miners in the placers to be preserved? What other protection was there for a country entirely destitute of law?

Let those who would condemn these men try to realize how they would act under similar circumstances, and they will soon find everything to approve and nothing to condemn in the transactions of the early Vigilantes. I have endeavored to narrate nothing but facts, and these will enable every reader to judge correctly of the merits of each case.

I would fain believe that this history, bloody as it is, will prove both interesting and instructive. In all that concerns crime of the blackest dye on the one hand, and love for law and order on the other, it stands without a parallel in the annals of any people. Nowhere else, nor at any former period since men became civilized, have murder and robbery and social vice presented an organized front, and offered an open contest for supremacy to a large civilized community. Their works for centuries have been done by stealth, in darkness, and as far away from society as possible. I cannot now remember the instance, within the past three hundred years, when the history of any country records the fact that the criminal element of an entire community, numbering thousands, was believed to be greater than the peaceful element. Yet it was so here. And when the Vigilantes of Montana entered upon their work, they did not know how soon they might have to encounter a force numerically greater than their own.

In my view the moral of this history is a good one. The brave and faithful conduct of the Vigilantes furnishes an example of American character, from a point of view entirely new. We know what our countrymen were capable of doing when exposed to Indian massacre. We have read history after history recording the sufferings of early pioneers in the East, South, and West, but what they would do when surrounded by robbers and assassins, who were in all civil aspects like themselves, it has remained for the first settlers of the northwestern mines to tell. And that they did their work well, and showed in every act a love for law, order, and for the moral and social virtues in which they had been educated, and a regard for our free institutions, no one can doubt who rightly appreciates the motives which actuated them.

A people who had not been reared to respect law and order, and to regard the privileges which flow from a free government as greater than all others, in the regulation of society, would have been restrained by fear from any such united and thorough effort as that which in Montana actually scourged crime out of existence, and secured to an unorganized community all the immunities and blessings of good government. The terror which popular justice inspired in the criminal population has never been forgotten. To this day crime has been less frequent in occurrence in Montana than in any other of the new Territories, and no banded criminals have made that Territory an abiding place.

Although not the first exhibition of Vigilante justice, the one I here record was the most thorough and severe, and stands as an example for all new settlements that in the future may be similarly afflicted, for it was not until driven to it both by the frequent and unremitting villainies of the ruffians, and by the necessities of a condition for which there was no law in existence, that the people resorted to measures of their own, and made and enforced laws suited to the exigency. But enough! If the history fails to remove the prejudices of my readers, nothing I can say will do so. It speaks for itself, and though there are a few of its later occurrences I would gladly blot, there is nothing in its early transactions, nothing in the design it unfolds, nothing in the results which have followed, that on a similar occasion I would not wish to see reproduced.

VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS

CHAPTER I
HENRY PLUMMER

The Snake River or Lewis fork of the Columbia takes its rise in a small lake which is separated by the main range of the Rocky Mountains from the large lakes of the Yellowstone, that being less than twenty miles distant from it. The Yellowstone, the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin, forming the head waters of the Missouri, and the Snake, the largest tributary fork of the Columbia, all rise within or near the limits of the territory recently dedicated by the Government to the purpose of a National Park.

As contrasted with the large rivers of regions other than the one it traverses, the Snake River would be a very remarkable stream, but there, where everything in nature is wonderful, it is simply one of the marked features in its physical geography. From its source to its junction with the Clarke fork of the Columbia, a distance of nine hundred miles, it flows through a region which, at some remote period, has been the scene of greater volcanic action than any other portion of North America. Unlike other streams, which are formed by rivulets and springs, this river is scarcely less formidable in its appearance at its commencement than at its termination. It leaps into rapids from the moment of its exit, and its waters, blackened by the basaltic bed through which it flows, roar and fret, and lash the sides of the gloomy cañon which it enters, presenting a scene of tumult and fury, that extends far beyond the limits of vision. This initiatory character it maintains, alternated with occasional reaches of quiet large expansions, and narrow contractions, fearful and tremendous cataracts, to its debouchure into the Columbia. Its channel and its course, alike sinuous, have obtained for it its name. Navigation is impeded by reason of fearful rapids, every few miles of the first five hundred after leaving the lake. The shores for most of the distance are barren rock, always precipitous, often inaccessible from the river, and frequently engorged by lofty mountains and rocky cañons which shut its inky surface from the light of day. The scenery, though on the most tremendous scale, is savage, unattractive, and frightful. Its waters lash the base of the three Tetons, so celebrated as the great landmarks of this portion of the continent. As they approach the Columbia they break into frequent cataracts, the largest of which, the great Shoshone Fall, with a perpendicular descent of two hundred and fifty feet, presents many points of singular interest.

On the river, twelve miles above its mouth, at a point accessible from the Columbia by small steamboats, stands the little village of Lewiston, which, at the time of which I write, was the capital of all the vast Territory that had been just organized under the euphonic name of Idaho. This Territory then included Montana and Wyoming, which had not been organized. Lewiston, being the nearest accessible point by water to the recently discovered gold placers of Elk City, Oro Fino, Florence, and Warner Creek, grew with the rapidity known only to mining towns into an emporium. In less than three months from the time the first immigrants commenced to establish a settlement there, several streets of more than a mile in length were laid out, thickly covered on either side with dwellings, stores, hotels, and saloons, chiefly constructed of common factory cotton. A tenement of this kind could be extemporized in a few hours. The frame was of light scantling or poles, and the cloth in most cases fastened to it with tacks. Seen from a distance, the town had the appearance of being built of white marble, but truly

“’T is distance lends enchantment to the view,”

for upon entering it the fragility of the material soon disabused the vision and the admiration of the beholder. At night, when lights were burning in these frail tenements, a stranger would think the town illuminated. The number of drinking and gambling saloons was greatly in excess of stores and private dwellings, and to nearly all of these was attached that most important attraction of a mining town, the hurdy-gurdy. The sound of the violin which struck the ear on entering the street, was never lost while passing through it, and at many of the saloons the evidence of the bacchanal orgies which were in progress inside was often apparent in the eagerness exhibited by the crowd which surrounded the building without. The voices of auctioneers on the street corners, the shouts of frequent horsemen as they rode up and down the streets, the rattle of vehicles arriving and departing for the miners’ camps, troops of miners, Indians, gamblers, the unmeaning babble of numerous drunken men, the tawdrily apparelled dancing women of the hurdy-gurdys, altogether presented a scene of life in an entirely new aspect to the person who for the first time entered a mining town. It is a feature of modern civilization which cannot elsewhere be found, search the whole world over. The thirst for gold is shared by all classes. Those who are unwilling to labor, in their efforts to obtain it by less honorable means, flock to the mines to ply their guilty vocations. Hence there is no vice unrepresented in a mining camp, and no type or shade of character in civilized society that is not there publicly developed. The misfortune is, as a general thing, that the worst elements, being most popular, generally preponderate.

Our Civil War was raging at the time that Lewiston became a mining emporium. Sympathizers with each party fled to the mines, to escape the possible responsibilities they might incur by remaining in the States. They carried their political views with them, and identified themselves with those portions of society which reflected their respective attachments. Loyalty and Secession each flourished by turn, and were the prolific causes of frequent bloody dissensions. There was no law to restrain human passion, so that each man was a law unto himself, according as he was swayed by the evil or good of his own nature. The temptations to evil, not so numerous, were much more powerful than were ever before presented to a great majority of the immigrants. Gambling and drinking were made attractive by the presence of debased women, who lured to their ruin all who, fortunate in the possession of gold, could not withstand their varied devices.

In the Spring of 1861, among the daily arrivals at Lewiston, was a man of gentlemanly bearing and dignified deportment, accompanied by a woman, to all appearance his wife. He took quarters at the best hotel in town. Before the close of the second day after his arrival his character as a gambler was fully understood, and in less than a fortnight his abandonment of his female companion betrayed the illicit connection which had existed between them. Alone, among strangers, destitute, the poor woman told how she had been beguiled, by the promises of this man, from home and family, and induced to link herself with his fortunes. A fond husband and three helpless children mourned her loss by a visitation worse than death. Lacking moral courage to return to her heart-broken husband and ask forgiveness, she sought to drown her sorrow by plunging still deeper into the abyss of shame and ruin. Soon, alas! she became one of the lowest inmates of a frontier brothel. This latest crime of Henry Plummer was soon forgotten, or remembered only as one of many similar events which occur in mining camps.

He, meanwhile, in the pursuit of his profession as a gambler, formed the acquaintance of many congenial spirits. From their subsequent operations it was also apparent that at his instigation an alliance was formed with them which had for its object the attainment of fortune by the most desperate means. Every fortunate man in any of the mining camps was marked as the prey, sooner or later, of this abandoned combination. Every gambler or rough infesting the camp, either voluntarily or by threats was induced to unite in the enterprise; and thus originated the band of desperadoes which, for the succeeding two years, by their fearful atrocities, spread such terror through the northern mines. Plummer was their acknowledged leader.

Professional gamblers everywhere, in a new country, form a community by themselves. They have few intimates outside of their own number. A sort of tacit understanding among them links them together by certain implied rules and regulations, which they readily obey. Of the same nature, we may suppose, was the bond which united Plummer and his associates in their infernal designs of plunder and butchery. The honor which thieves accord each other, the prospect of unlimited reward for their vicious deeds, and the certainty of condign punishment for any act of treachery, secured the band and its purposes against any betrayal by its members.

Nowhere are the conventionalities of social life sooner abandoned than in a mining camp. To call a man by his proper name there generally implies that he is either a stranger or one with whom you do not care to make acquaintance. The gamblers were generally known by diminutive surnames or appellations significant of their characters. I shall so designate those of them who were thus known, in this narrative.

Prominent among the associates of Plummer at Lewiston were Jack Cleveland, Cherokee Bob, and Bill Bunton. Cleveland was an old California acquaintance, familiar with Plummer’s early history. He used this fatal knowledge, as it afterwards proved, in a dictatorial and offensive manner, often presuming upon it to arrogate a position in the band which by common consent was assigned to Plummer.

Cherokee Bob was a native Georgian, and received his name from the fact that he was a quarter-blood Indian. He was bitter in his hatred of the loyal cause and all engaged in it. Before he came to Lewiston he had, in an affray of his own plotting, killed two or three soldiers in the Walla Walla theatre. He fled to Lewiston to escape the vengeance of their comrades.

Bill Bunton was a double-dyed murderer and notorious horse and cattle thief. He had killed a man at a ball near Walla Walla, was tried for murder, and acquitted on insufficient evidence. He afterwards killed his brother-in-law, and in cold blood soon after shot down an Indian, and escaped the clutches of the law by flight. Possessing himself of a ranche on Pataha Creek, he lived there with his Indian wife, under the pretext of farming. It was soon ascertained, however, that his business was secreting and selling stolen stock. The officers made a dash upon his ranche, but the bird had again flown. Soon afterward, disguised in the blanket and paint of an Indian, he entered Lewiston, and lounged about the streets for several days without exciting suspicion. During this time he became a member of Plummer’s murderous band.

There were several others whose names are unknown, that entered into the combination formed for systematized robbery and murder at this time. Around this nucleus a large number of desperate men afterwards gathered. They became so formidable in numbers, and their deeds of blood were so frequent and daring, that the mining camps were awed by them into tacit submission, and witnessed without even remonstrance the perpetration of murders and robberies in their very midst, of the most revolting character.

CHAPTER II
SOCIETY IN LEWISTON

Towards the close of the Summer of 1862, the band organized by Plummer having increased in numbers, he selected two points of rendezvous, as bases for their operations. These were called “shebangs.” They were enclosed by mountains, whose rugged fastnesses were available for refuge in case of attack.

One was located between Alpwai and Pataha creeks, on the road from Lewiston to Walla Walla, about twenty-five miles from the former, and the other at the foot of Craig’s Mountain, between Lewiston and Oro Fino, at a point where the main road was intersected by a trail for pack animals. The location of the latter was upon ground reserved by treaty to the Nez Percés Indians, and near a military post established for its protection. The chief of the tribe complained to the resident agent of the Indians, of the aggression. He laid the complaint before the commandant of the post, who treated it with neglect. The robbers occupied the spot without molestation, and when they abandoned it, it was of their own accord.

There were several smaller stations nearer to Walla Walla and Lewiston, which were occupied only as occasion might require. A close communication was established between these localities, by which the operations of each were speedily known to all. Plummer, meantime, while secretly directing the affairs of the shebangs and issuing orders continually to the men, contrived to ward off suspicion from himself, and preserve the appearance of a harmless and inoffensive citizen of Lewiston. His notoriety as a gambler was shared by so many better men, and by a great majority of the miners themselves, that it really protected him in his character as a robber. While, therefore, he was prying into the financial condition of those with whom his profession brought him in daily contact in town, he was at the same time informing his confederates at the shebangs of every departure which boded success to their enterprise.

Such of the population as were not, to a greater or less degree, involved in the gambling operations of the community, although perfectly cognizant of the designs of the robbers, were too insignificant in numbers to offer any active opposition. Being without organization, they hardly knew each other. Such was the state of feeling that, if a gambler or rough desired to possess any of the articles on sale by merchants or grocers, he entered a store, selected for himself the best the assortment afforded, and took it away with a request that it should be charged, or stated that some day when he was in luck he would pay for it. Rather than risk an affray, the dealer submitted to the imposition. Payment was generally made, the gamblers entertaining, among themselves, a standard of honor in such matters which it was considered disgraceful to violate.

The two roads upon which the shebangs were located were the only thoroughfares in the country, and not a day passed that they were not traversed by people in going to and returning from the interior mining camps, and in coming into and departing from the country. The number of robberies and murders committed by the banditti will never be known. Mysterious disappearances soon became of almost weekly occurrence. The danger which every man incurred of being robbed or killed was demonstrated by numerous escapes made by horsemen who had been assaulted and fired upon, and escaped by the fleetness of their horses. It was fully understood that whoever passed over either of these roads would have to run the gantlet in the neighborhood of the shebangs, and people generally went prepared. Crime was fearfully on the increase all through the secluded districts which separated the river from the distant mining camps. The country itself, about equally made up of mountains, foothills, cañons, dense pine forests, lava beds, and deep river-channels, was as favorable for the commission of crime as for the concealment of its perpetrators.

The two shebangs swarmed with ruffians. On one occasion a party of half a dozen, while riding in the vicinity of Craig’s Mountain, were stopped by a volley from the shebang, which, being harmless, was returned. A number of well-mounted robbers started in pursuit. The party escaped by hard spurring, one of the number, to lighten his burden, throwing several large bags of gold dust into the grass. They were afterwards recovered. A butcher by the name of Harkness, of Oro Fino, was also assaulted, and fired upon, who owed his deliverance to the fleetness of his horse. Owners of pack trains never attempted to pass without force sufficient to intimidate the robbers.

The other shebang was used as a receptacle for stolen horses. It was under the superintendence of a noted horse-thief by the name of Turner, who had been a partner in the business with Bill Bunton. Any member of the band, whose claim to recognition was founded upon success in any thieving or bloody enterprise, could leave his jaded steed here in exchange for a fresh one. A single incident will illustrate the manner in which many of the horses were obtained. A gentleman riding a beautiful young mare, on his way from Oregon to Oro Fino, while she was drinking from the stream near by, was suddenly confronted by a man, who claimed her as his property. Several persons were witnesses to the meeting. Drawing a bill of sale of the mare, from his pocket, which he had obtained five hundred miles away, he dismounted, and was about to prove his ownership, when the ruffian jumped into the saddle, and, seizing the bridle, rode rapidly away. The wayfarer called upon the by-standers to assist in the recapture of the animal, instead of which they knocked him down, stripped him of everything in his pockets, and told him to leave. He entered Lewiston utterly destitute.

No occupation in the northern mines tested the courage and honesty of men more severely than that of the Express riders. Their duties, in riding from camp to camp, frequently for hundreds of miles, where there was not a dwelling, carrying large amounts of treasure, made them objects of frequent attack. Tried men were selected for this business—men as well known for personal bravery as for their adroitness in the use of weapons in personal encounter. The notoriety of this class was sufficient as a general thing to protect them from attack, unless it could be made under every possible advantage. It is a remarkable fact, and speaks as little in favor of the courage of the desperadoes as in praise of the daring nobility of these early Express riders, that few of the latter were interrupted in the discharge of their dangerous duties. They were ever upon the alert. It was the work of an instant only, when attacked, for them to draw and discharge their revolvers, with deadly effect, and follow up the smallest advantage with the no less fatal bowie-knife. One man has been known in an encounter of this kind to kill four assailants and escape unharmed.

Tracy & Co., of Lewiston, had a pony express route from that town to Salmon River, a distance of seventy-five miles. Their messenger, whom we only know by the name of Mose, was a man of great intrepidity, and perfectly familiar with all the risks of his business. In single encounter he was understood to be more than a match for any man in the mountains. Some time in the early Fall of 1862 a plan was laid by Plummer and his associates to capture Mose. The place selected for the purpose was the trail crossing of White Bird Creek, at a distance of sixty miles from Lewiston and eighteen from Salmon River. At this point the creek runs between very abrupt banks densely covered with cottonwoods, rendering both descent and ascent tedious and difficult. The robbers, in anticipation of the arrival of Mose, as usual on a keen lope, after darkness had set in had felled a tree across the trail at a sufficient height to admit the passage of the horse, and at the same time strike the rider in the chest, and throw him suddenly from the saddle. They then intended to kill him and rob his cantinas, which it was supposed would contain several thousand dollars in gold dust. At Chapman’s ranche, near the crossing, Mose was told that several suspicious characters had been prowling in the neighborhood during the afternoon, and with that keen sense which had been educated to scent danger from afar, he at once comprehended the whole plot. Carefully descending the bank, he discovered the snare, and turning to the left avoided it, hurried through the creek, and ascending the opposite bank cast a look of derision back upon the foiled highwaymen. This fearless messenger continued in service long after this event, but his future trips were made under the escort of well-armed assistants.

Winters are nowhere more dreary than among the miners. Frost and snow bring their labors to an end, and for three or four months they either remain in their camps in a state of listless inactivity, or seek for occupation and enjoyment in the excesses of the nearest populous settlement. Hundreds of them actually squander during the season of winter all that they have obtained by the most severe toil during the rest of the year. With the terrible example before him, he must be a man of resolute will who can long refrain from embracing vice in all its forms.

Gambling becomes a favorite occupation, and whiskey a common beverage. The society of abandoned women lures him on, until every moral, social, and virtuous resolution is broken down, and the experience of a few months of such a life wholly unfits him for a return to his earlier pursuits. This is the experience of three-fourths of the young men who seek for fortune among the gold mines. Most of this class who had been occupied in placer digging during the summer and fall, at the first approach of cold forsook their mines, and crowded into Lewiston to spend the winter, bringing with them the hard earnings of their toil. Following in their wake came the professional gamblers and sports, and, mingling with the common mass, were the wretches who had reached the lowest depths of human depravity. A letter from one of the early settlers of Lewiston, written at the time, says: “Late in 1862 a large number congregated here to pass the winter. About seventy-five per cent of these were cut-throats, robbers, gamblers, and escaped convicts. Honest men were in a fearful minority, and dared not lisp of the arrest and punishment of criminals; the villains had their own way in everything.”

I record the following as an incident which will better illustrate the condition of society than anything I can write. A gambler named Kirby borrowed of another a revolver. Secretly withdrawing the charges from it, an hour later he returned it, and requested the owner to lend him a few ounces of gold dust, which request was declined. Knowing that he had the money, Kirby, enraged at the refusal, put the muzzle of a loaded revolver to the temple of the other, and blew out his brains. No arrest was attempted. The cold-blooded, mid-day murderer walked the streets of the town during the entire winter, mingled in the sports, and escaped unwhipped of justice. Three years afterward he was arrested in Oregon, and turned over to the Idaho authorities, upon the requisition of Governor Lyon, but no witnesses appearing against him he was suffered to go at large.

In a state of society where the majority of the people depend upon vicious pursuits for a livelihood, want and destitution are the natural elements. Increase of crime in all its forms follows. All through the Winter of 1861–62, and until returns began to come in from the mines the following Spring, Lewiston was daily and nightly a theatre where the entire calendar of crime was exhibited in epitome. Murders were frequent; robberies and thefts constant; gambling, debauchery, drunkenness, and all their attendant evils, openly flaunted in the face of day in defiance of law. Money and food were so scarce that robbery with the sporting community became an actual necessity. How to protect themselves against it sorely taxed the wit and tried the courage of the unfortunate property holders. Canvas walls offered slight resistance to determined thieves, and life was not protected by them from murderous bullets. An exemplification is furnished in the following incident:

A German named Hiltebrant kept a saloon in a large canvas building in the centre of the town. It was the principal rendezvous for the Germans, and a popular retail establishment. Hiltebrant was known to possess a considerable amount of coin and gold dust, which the roughs resolved to appropriate. The barriers in the way involved only the possible murder of the owner and two friends who occupied a large bed in the front of the saloon. Between twelve and one o’clock in one of the coldest nights of the first week of January, the door was suddenly broken from its hinges, and a volley of balls fired in the direction of the bed. Hiltebrant was instantly killed. His two companions, after returning the fire of the ruffians, seized the treasure and escaped. One of the villains was wounded in the finger. When the firing ceased, the robbers coolly entered the building, lighted a candle, and proceeded to search for the money. Finding none they departed, uttering curses upon their ill-fortune, not, however, until several citizens appeared upon the scene, and witnessed the enormity of their crime. The murderers passed fearlessly and unconcernedly through the crowd, no effort being made to arrest them, lest a rescue might be attempted, which would prove fatal to all concerned, and possibly result in the burning of the town. The next day, however, a meeting of the citizens was held, for the avowed purpose of punishing the murderers, and devising measures to arrest the further progress of crime.

This was the first effort at self-protection made by the people. The moment was a trying one. All knew that the roughs were in the majority, and no one was bold enough to recommend open resistance to their encroachments, for fear of consequences. Henry Plummer took an active part in the proceedings, depicting with fervid eloquence “the horrors of anarchy” and solemnly warning the people to “take no steps that might bring disgrace and obloquy upon their rising young city.” Known as a gambler only, and suspected by few of any darker associations, his winning manner had the effect to squelch in its inception the initiatory movement, which at no distant period was to burst forth and whelm him, with hundreds of his bloody associates, in its avenging vortex.

The brother of the murdered Hiltebrant was in business at this time at the Oro Fino mines. Hearing of the murder, he openly avowed the intention of going immediately to Lewiston to bring the authors to justice. The banditti sent him a message that he would not live to get there, which had the effect to daunt him from his purpose, and the assassins, for the time, escaped punishment.

CHAPTER III
NORTHERN MINES

Prospecting, as it is called, for gold placers and quartz veins has grown into a profession. No man can engage in it successfully unless he understands it. There are certain indications in the face of the country, the character of the rocks, the presentation of the strata, the form of the gulch, the gravel in streams or on the bars, the cement formation below it, or the shape of the mountains, which are generally known only to experienced prospectors, that determine generally the presence of the precious metals. Guided by these unmistakable signs, the veteran gold searcher is sustained in his solitary explorations by the consciousness of possessing knowledge which must sooner or later lead to success. Impressed with the idea that as many rich gulches and productive veins have been found, so others remain to be discovered,—and that as those already developed have made their owners rich, so some fortunate discovery may do the same for him,—he mounts his pony, and with pick, shovel, and pan, a magnifying glass, a few pounds of bacon, flour, and coffee, his trusty rifle and revolver at hand, and his roll of blankets and not infrequently a quart flask of whiskey, he plunges into the unexplored recesses of the mountains, and for weeks and months is lost to all the world of humanity beside himself. Alone, but encouraged by that hope which outlives every disappointment, he wanders hundreds of miles into the unvisited wilderness, the hero of countless adventures and the explorer of the world’s great solitudes.

Men of this class are numerous in all gold-mining regions. Their very occupation makes them maniacs. They lose all relish for society, and think of nothing but the success they are one day to meet with in the pursuit of gold. Frequent as their discoveries often are, and promising as many of them proved to be, the one they are in search of lies still farther onward. Abandoning to those who follow them discoveries which would assure them all the wealth they need, they lead on and on into the mountain labyrinth, pioneering the path of empire, to die at last alone, unfriended, and destitute, beyond its utmost boundaries. It is to such men that we owe the discovery of all the gold regions which have contributed to our wealth since the days of Marshall, the discoverer of gold in California in 1848.

Gold had been discovered west of the mountains in several portions of Washington Territory previous to this time. As early as the year 1852, H. M. Chase found it on a creek which flowed into the Grand Ronde River. He exhibited it at Portland, and such was the excitement it occasioned that several parties of discovery were organized, and plunged into the mountain recesses of that portion of Washington which afterwards became Idaho. Among others was one Pierce, who became infatuated with the idea that the river sands of this unexplored region were filled with diamonds. He searched for them very thoroughly, but the traditions of the time fail to inform me that he found anything more valuable than gold. An unimportant camp of the early miners, which received his name, has served to transmit his memory and mania to the present period. These early explorations, leading deeper and deeper into the mountain wilderness, finally resulted in the discovery of the Florence and Oro Fino mines.

Thousands of people, lured by their discoveries, had nearly worked out the placers of Oro Fino during the Summer of 1861. The Pacific world, alive to the importance of a region which promised such great additions to its wealth, kept up a stream of emigration to the placers, which exhausted all the sources of supply more rapidly than they could be filled. The world was there in miniature. Meantime the indomitable prospector kept in the van. Crossing the Salmon River range, he soon unveiled the riches of those placers which afterwards became known as Florence and Elk City. They were immediately occupied by thousands,—and other thousands of the far East, thrilled with the story of their richness, were on their way to the new El Dorado. An hegira similar to that of 1849 again took place across the plains. Lewiston was no longer the base of operations. Among the earliest of those to abandon it for a point more favorable to the prosecution of their enterprise, were the banditti which had so long held its inhabitants in fear. Supplied with horses from the shebang on the Walla Walla road, they departed from Lewiston in small parties, intending to recommence operations at a place afterwards to be selected, in the mountains of the interior.

The daring, adventurous, and courageous elements of character are necessarily developed and brought into frequent action in a mining country; and whenever these are found in combination with high moral principle, they are held in continual fear by men of criminal life. One bold, honest man will demoralize the guilty designs of a host of rascals. Nothing was so much dreaded by Plummer’s murderous gang as the possible organization of a Vigilance Committee; and any man who favored it was marked for early destruction. Such a man was Patrick Ford, the keeper of a saloon in Lewiston. Ford was an active man in his own business,—eager in the pursuit of gain, but entirely upright in his dealings, and the open and avowed enemy of the roughs. He, more than any other member of the community, had urged the people of Lewiston to unite for their protection, and hang every suspected individual in the place; and he taunted them with cowardice when they disbanded without punishing the known murderers of Hiltebrant. As fearless as he was uncompromising, he denounced the ruffians in person, and warned them that a time would come ere long when they would meet their deserts at the hands of an outraged people. He did not conceal from them his intention of following in the track of the prosperous miner, lead where it might,—which purpose they resolved to prevent. His death they regarded as necessary to their future prosperity. Having ascertained that he intended to leave Lewiston with a half-dozen dancing girls for the saloon he had established at Oro Fino, they laid a plan to insult him and involve him in a quarrel on his arrival at their shebang, and kill him. Ford was admonished of the design, which he foiled by avoiding the shebang. Being assured of his safe passage to Oro Fino, the robbers, led by Plummer, Ridgely, and Reeves, mounted their horses and started for the interior. Of the particular events of the early part of the trip, further than that it was marked by the frequent robbery of travellers, I am unable to speak. When within seven or eight miles of Oro Fino, the robbers observed two Frenchmen, some distance apart, approaching them on foot. The one in advance was ordered to stop and throw up his hands, as in that position he was powerless and could not offer any resistance. After a careful search of his person they found nothing of value, and bade him move on as rapidly as possible, telling him that it was “a rough country to be in without money” and that he “had better get out of it as soon as possible.” With the other, whom they subjected to a like process, they were more fortunate, and, despite his solemn denial, found in his pocket a purse containing a thousand dollars in dust, which they appropriated, dismissing him with the remark that if he had done the square thing and not lied they would have given him enough to take him to the Columbia,—but as it was, he might be thankful to get off with a whole carcass. Some idea may be formed of the daring and recklessness of this robbery when it is understood to have occurred at mid-day, near a town containing a population of several thousands, and on a thoroughfare thronged with travellers.

Uttering a shout of exultation, the robbers dashed into the town of Oro Fino with the impetuosity of a cavalry charge. Reining up in front of Ford’s saloon, which they entered, they called loudly upon the bar-keeper for liquor. Ford was absent. When they had drunk, they commenced demolishing the contents of the saloon. Decanters, tumblers, chairs, and tables were broken and scattered over the apartment. One of their number, more fiendish than the others, seized a lap-dog from one of the females and cut off his tail. At this juncture Ford himself came upon the scene. Boldly confronting the rioters, pistol in hand, he ordered them instantly to leave his premises. He charged them with the robbery of the Frenchmen, and denounced them as thieves, robbers, and murderers. They saw and feared his determination, and obeyed his commands with alacrity. He followed them into the street, and threatened them with punishment if they remained in town. They were about to act upon this hint, when Ford, fully armed, came to them a second time, and demanded the cause of their delay. He was answered with a bullet, inflicting a dangerous wound. The fire was returned, and the fight became general,—three against one. The robbers were protected by their horses, while their antagonist was openly exposed to their fire. Ford emptied the charges from one six-shooter, made five shots with the other, and was in the act of aiming for the last, when he fell dead, riddled with the balls of his adversaries. Ridgely was shot through the leg twice, and Plummer’s horse disabled.

Such was the melancholy fate of Patrick Ford,—a man long to be remembered as the friend of law and order,—the first, indeed, in the northern mines who dared to urge the extermination of the robbers, as the only remedy for their depredations. He literally sealed his principles with his life’s blood.

Ridgely’s wounds disabled him for service. He was taken by his companions to a ranche near the town, and as well cared for as circumstances would admit. Leaving him there, the other members of the band, fearful of the friends of Ford, seldom ventured beyond the limits of their camp.

CHAPTER IV
CHARLEY HARPER

A new candidate for bloody laurels now appears in the person of Charley Harper. He arrived in Walla Walla in the Fall of 1861. A young man of twenty-five, of medium size, of erect carriage, clear, florid complexion, and profuse auburn hair, he could, but for the leer in his small inexpressive gray eye, have passed in any society for a gentleman. His previous life is a sealed book;—but the readiness with which he engaged in crime showed that he was not without experience. He told his landlord that he had no money, but that partners were coming who would relieve his necessities. The second night after his arrival, several hundred dollars in gold coin was stolen from a lodger who occupied the room adjoining his. While intoxicated the next day, he exhibited by the handful eagles which he said were borrowed from an acquaintance. No one doubted that he had stolen them; but where officers were believed to wink at crime, prosecution was useless. Charley was not even arrested upon suspicion. The money he had obtained introduced him to the society of the roughs, with whom he became so popular that he aspired to be their leader. This honor was disputed by Ridgely, whom we left wounded in the last chapter, and by Cherokee Bob, both of whom claimed precedence from longer residence and greater familiarity with the opportunities for distinction.

Circumstances soon occurred which enabled Charley, without disputation, to assume the role of chief of the Walla Walla desperadoes. Cherokee Bob, heretofore mentioned as an associate of Plummer at Lewiston, was an uneducated Southerner. His mother was a half-blood Cherokee,—hence his name. With a hatred of the North and the Northern soldiery born of prejudice and ignorance, and a constitutional faith in the superior prowess of the Southern people, and with mercurial passions inflamed by the contest that was still raging, this ruffian was nearly a maniac in his adherence to the cause of Secession. He could talk or think of little else than the great inferiority of the Northern to the Southern soldiers, and was continually boasting of his own superior physical power. He would often taunt the soldiers of the garrison near Walla Walla. In ingenuity of vaunting expression, he far excelled Captain Bobadil himself;—but like that hero of dramatic fiction he was destined to experience a reverse more humiliating, if possible, than that of his great prototype. With shotgun in hand and revolver in his belt, it was his frequent boast that he could take a negro along with him, carrying two baskets loaded with pistols, and put to flight the bravest regiment of the Federal army.

No person who has witnessed a theatrical performance in a mining camp can forget the general din and noise with which the audience fill up the intervals between the acts. Whistling, singing, hooting, yelling, and a general shuffling of feet and moving about are so invariable as to form, in fact, a feature of the performance. So long as they are unaccompanied by quarrelsome demonstrations, and do not become too boisterous, efforts are seldom made to suppress them. The boys are permitted to have a good time in their own way, and the lookers-on, accustomed to the scene, are often compensated for any annoyance that may be occasioned, by strokes of border humor more enjoyable than the play itself.

Cherokee Bob, eager for an opportunity when he could wreak his demoniac wrath upon some of the Federal soldiers, with the aid and complicity of Deputy Sheriff Porter, who like himself was a Secessionist, contrived the following plan as favorable to his purpose; it was agreed between them, that on a certain evening Bob and his friends should attend the theatre, fully armed. Porter, under pretext of quelling disturbances between the acts, should by his insulting language and manner provoke an affray with the soldiers present, in the progress of which he would command Bob and those with him to assist, and thus under the seeming protection of law, save them from the consequences of any acts of vengeance they desired to commit. On the evening appointed, six or seven soldiers were seated side by side in the pit, a single one occupying a seat in the gallery behind them. Porter was near them, and Bob and his associates in a position convenient to him. When the curtain fell upon the first act, the usual noises commenced, the soldiers joining in making them. Porter sprang from his seat, and striding in front of them, vociferated,

“Dry up there, you brass-mounted hirelings, or I’ll snatch you bald-headed.”

This insulting language produced the desired effect. Smarting under the implied reproach it conveyed, one of the soldiers sharply inquired,

“Why do you single us out, when there are others more boisterous?”

Porter waited for no further provocation, but drawing and cocking his revolver with one hand, and seizing the soldier nearest to him with the other, he dragged him ignominiously into the circle where he was standing, ordering the deputy city marshal and Bob and his friends to assist in arresting him. The soldiers offered resistance. An immediate mêlée was the consequence. The women and children in the audience screamed in affright. The other soldiers present rushed with drawn pistols to the rescue of their comrade. The one in the gallery sprang upon one of the officers with the ferocity of a wild beast. Cherokee Bob with a pistol in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, his voice wildly ringing above all other sounds, was in his true element. More than a dozen pistol shots followed in quick succession. Two of the soldiers were killed, and others fearfully mangled. Porter and his deputy assistant were each shot through a leg, the latter crippled for life. The work of blood was progressing, and but for the interference of an officer of the garrison, would have ended only with the death of the assassins.

The next day the soldiers appealed to their commanding officer for redress. He ordered those of them engaged in the affray to be placed under arrest, and dismissed the subject from his thoughts. Indignant at this unexpected treatment, about fifty of the soldiers armed themselves, and marched into town, with the determination to capture and hang Cherokee Bob, whom they knew to be the chief mover of the murderous assault. Disavowing all riotous intentions they informed the citizens of their design and commenced a thorough search for the murderer. He, meanwhile, fearful of their revenge, eluded them by leaving the town before the dawn of morning on a stolen horse, for Lewiston.

The year before his appearance in Walla Walla, Ridgely was living in Sacramento. During his sojourn there he acquired notoriety for his thievish and villainous propensities. One of the police corps, detecting him in the commission of a larceny, arrested him. He was convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment in the county jail. He vowed revenge against Gilchrist the policeman, but on his release fled to the gold mines. Soon after his arrival at Walla Walla he fell in with his old enemy, and secretly renewed the determination to take his life. Calling upon a friend to accompany him, he boldly entered a saloon where he knew Gilchrist to be and fired several shots at him. Gilchrist fell at the first fire. Ridgely, believing he had killed him, left the saloon, saying as he went, “I have thrown a load off my mind, and now feel easy.” Gilchrist was badly wounded, but recovered. Ridgely, escaping arrest on the night of the assault, crossed the river into Oregon the next day, beyond the jurisdiction of the authorities of Walla Walla, which was in Washington Territory. Thence he went to Lewiston and joined Plummer.

Cherokee Bob and Ridgely being out of the way, Charley Harper, as next in rank on the scale of villainous preferment, became the Walla Walla chief.

CHAPTER V
CHEROKEE BOB

Intelligence of the discovery in 1861 of extensive placers on the head waters of Salmon River, excelling in richness any former locations, had been circulated through all the border towns during the following Winter. The excitement consequent thereon was intense. Such was the impatience of the people to effect an early arrival there that many left Walla Walla and Lewiston in mid-winter, and on their way thither perished in the snows which engorged the mountain passes. Others, more cautious, awaited the coming of warm weather, and made the journey,—tedious, difficult, and dangerous at best,—with comparative safety. Among the latter number were Charley Harper and his band of brigands. Mounted on strong, fleet horses which they had acquired during the winter, the criminal cavalcade with its chief at the head dashed up the river valley, insulting, threatening, or robbing every one so unfortunate as to fall in their way. Of the number prominent in the riotous column were Peoples, English, Scott, and Brockie—men whose deeds of villainy have blackened the criminal records of nearly all the larger cities of the Pacific slope. With none of the magnanimity which characterized Joaquin Murieta and the earlier brigands of California, and with all their recklessness of crime and murder, a meaner, baser, more contemptible band of ruffians perhaps never before disgraced the annals of the race. No crime was too atrocious for them to commit, no act of shame or wantonness was uncongenial to their grovelling natures. They were as totally depraved as a long and unchecked career of every variety of criminal indulgence could make them. Afraid of nothing but the law, and not afraid of that in these new and unorganized communities, they were little else than devils incarnate. Insensible to all appeals for mercy, and ever acting upon the cautious maxim that “dead men tell no tales,” the only chance for escape from death for those whom they assaulted was in their utter inability to do them injury. Human life regarded as an obstacle to their designs, was of no more importance than the blowing up of a safe, or any other act which stood between them and their prey. Of course it was impossible that such a band of desperadoes should pass over the long and desolate route from Walla Walla to Florence without adventure.

On the second or third day after leaving Walla Walla, when nearing Florence, they met a company consisting of five men and a boy of sixteen, who were on their way to a neighboring camp. The brigands surrounded them, and with cocked pistols well aimed, gave the usual order, “Throw up your hands.” This order being obeyed, two of them dismounted to search the persons of their victims for treasure, the others meanwhile covering them with their revolvers. Five purses, containing amounts varying from fifty to five hundred dollars, were taken from them. The boy was overlooked, and had seated himself on a granite bowlder by the roadside.

Scott, as he tells the story himself, approached him more from curiosity than expectation, when the following conversation ensued:

“Come,” said Scott, addressing him, “draw your weasel now.”

“How do you know I’ve got any, stranger?” queried the youth.

“No fooling, I say. Hand out your buckskin.”

“You wouldn’t rob a poor little devil like me, would you?”

“Don’t keep me waiting longer, or I’ll cut your ears off,”—and Scott drew his bowie as if to carry the threat into execution.

“Well, I only get half-wages, you know. Is your heart all gizzard?”

“Get off from that stone and shell out, or I’ll blow your brains out in a minute,” said Scott.

The boy sprung up hurriedly, and with affected reluctance thrust his hand into his pocket.

“Well, stra-an-nger,” he inquired with a peculiar drawl and quizzical expression of the eyes, “what do you take Salmon River dust at, anyhow?”

With this he drew forth an empty purse, and handing it to Scott, said,

“If you think I’ve got any more, search me.”

Pleased with the pluck and humor of the lad, one of the band threw him a five-dollar piece, and they galloped furiously on towards Florence.

Thundering into the town, they drew up before the first saloon, fired their pistols, and urged their horses into the establishment. Without dismounting they ordered liquor for the crowd. All the by-standers partook with them. Harper ostentatiously threw one of the purses he had just seized upon the counter, telling the bar-keeper to weigh out the amount of the bill, and after a few moments they left the saloon, “to see,” as one of them expressed himself, “whether the town was big enough to hold them.”

This irruption into Florence occurred while that city was comparatively in embryo. The great floods of immigration from the East and West had not arrived. Some months must elapse before the expectations of the robbers could be realized. Meantime they distributed themselves among the saloons and bagnios, and by means of gambling and frequent robberies, contrived to hold the community in fear and pick up a subsistence until the great crowd came.

Leaving them for a season, we will return to Cherokee Bob, whom we left in his ignominious flight from Walla Walla to Lewiston, on a stolen horse. That worthy had established himself in a saloon at Lewiston, and while there, renewed an acquaintance with an old pal known as Bill Mayfield.

Mayfield was a fugitive from justice from Carson City, Nevada, where in the Winter of 1861–62 he renewed an acquaintance with Henry Plummer, whom he had known before that time in California. The Governor of California had issued a requisition for the surrender of Plummer, and a warrant for his arrest was in the hands of John Blackburn, the sheriff at Carson City. Though efficient as an officer, Blackburn, while in liquor, was overbearing and boastful of his prowess. His reputation was bad among the leading citizens of the town. Foiled in his search for Plummer, who, he believed, was in the Territory, and knowing of Mayfield’s intimacy with him, he accused the latter with concealing him. Mayfield denied the charge, and to avoid a quarrel with Blackburn, who was intoxicated, immediately left the saloon where the interview occurred, but as a measure of precaution armed himself with a bowie-knife. Blackburn, rendered desperate by liquor, soon followed in pursuit of him, and at a later hour of the same day found him in another saloon. As he entered the front, Mayfield tried to leave by the rear door. Failing in this, he drew his knife, and concealed it in his sleeve. Approaching Mayfield in a bullying manner Blackburn said to him,

“I will arrest Plummer, and no one can prevent it. I can arrest anybody. I can arrest you if I wish to.”

“You can arrest me,” replied Mayfield, “if you have a warrant for my arrest, but you can’t without.”

“I tell you,” rejoined Blackburn tauntingly, “that I can arrest you, or any one else,” and added with an oath, “I will arrest you anyhow,” accompanying this threat with a grasp for his pistol. Mayfield, with flash-like quickness, slipped his knife from its place of concealment, and gave him an anticipatory stab in the breast. Blackburn then tried to close with him, and being much the stronger man would have killed him had not Mayfield jumped aside and plied his knife vigorously until Blackburn fell. He died almost instantly. Mayfield surrendered himself for trial, was convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hanged.

While awaiting execution in the penitentiary, two miles distant from Carson, a plan for undermining the prison was successful, and he escaped. The friends who effected this were among the best citizens of Carson. They deemed the sentence unjust, and as soon as he was out of confinement, mounted him on a good horse, provided him with arms, and bade him leave the State as rapidly as possible. When his escape was discovered the next morning the jailer started in pursuit. He struck the track of the fugitive, and by means of relays, gained rapidly upon him. Mayfield’s friends meantime were not idle. They managed to be apprised of his progress, followed close upon his pursuers, and by a short cut at a favorable point, overtook him, and, doubling back, concealed him at a ranche in Pea Vine Valley, only forty miles from Carson City. There he remained six weeks,—many of the leading citizens of Carson meantime watching for an opportunity to aid his escape from the State. A careless exposure of his person led to his recognition and the discovery of his retreat. His friends were the first to learn of it, and before the officers could arrive at the ranche, Mayfield was on his way to Huffaker’s ranche on the Truckee River, which was nearer Carson by half the distance than the ranche he had left. While the officers were scouring the country in pursuit of him, he remained there until Spring, sharing a box stall with a favorite race-horse. When Spring was far enough advanced to afford pasturage and comfortable travel, he was furnished by his friends with a good “outfit,” and made the journey unmolested to Lewiston, where he joined his old friends Plummer and Cherokee Bob.

Here he trumped up an intimacy with a woman calling herself Cynthia, at that time stewardess of a hotel in Lewiston, and the fallen wife of a very worthy man.

In June, Cherokee Bob, accompanied by Mayfield and Cynthia, left Lewiston for Florence. Soon after their arrival the jealousy of Mayfield was aroused by the particular attentions of Bob to his mistress. On his part Bob made no concealment of his attachment for the woman, and when charged with harboring an intention of appropriating her affections, boldly acknowledged the soft impeachment. Cynthia possessed many charms of person, and considerable intelligence. She had, moreover, an eye to the main chance, and was ready to bestow her favors where they would command the most money. Bob was richer than Mayfield, and this fact won for him many encouraging smiles from the fair object of his pursuit. Mayfield’s jealousy flamed into anger, and he resolved to bring matters to a crisis, which should either secure his undisturbed possession of the woman, or transfer her to the sole care of his rival. He had confidence enough in Cynthia to believe that when required to choose between him and Cherokee Bob, her good taste, if nothing else, would give him the preference. He had not calculated on the strength of her cupidity. Confronting Bob in her presence, he said, as he laid his hand on the butt of his revolver,

“Bob, you know me.”

“Yes,” replied Bob with a similar gesture, “and Bill, you know me.”

“Well, now, Bob, the question is whether we shall make fools of ourselves or not.”

“Just as you say, Bill. I’m al’ys ready for anything that turns up.”

“Bob, if that woman loves you more than me,” said Mayfield, “take her. I don’t want her. But if she thinks the most of me, no person ought to come between us. I call that on the square.”

“Well, I do think considerable of Cynthia, and you are not married to her, you know,” replied Bob.

“That makes no difference. If she loves me, and wishes to live with me, no one shall interfere to prevent it.”

“Well, what do you propose to do about it?” asked Bob, after a brief pause.

“Let the woman decide for herself,” replied Mayfield. “What say you, Cynthia? Is it Bob or me?”

Thus appealed to, greatly to the surprise of Mayfield, Cynthia replied,

“Well, William, Robert is settled in business now, and don’t you think he is better able to take care of me than you are?”

This reply convinced Mayfield that his influence over the woman was lost. The quarrel terminated in a graceful surrender to Bob of all his claim upon her.

“You fall heir,” said he to his successor, “to all the traps and things there are around here.”

Cherokee Bob insisted upon paying for them; and Cynthia, true to the course of life she was pursuing, tried to soften the pangs of separation from her old lover by reiterating the question if he did not “think it the best thing that could be done under the circumstances.”

Cherokee Bob forced a generous purse upon Mayfield, who left him with the parting injunction to take good care of the girl.

The woman shed some tears and, as we shall see at a later stage of this history, showed by her return to Mayfield that she entertained a real affection; and when, a year later, she heard of his violent death, was heard to say that she would kill his murderer whenever opportunity afforded.

An explanation of the circumstances under which Bob became “settled in business” is not the least interesting part of this narrative. The senior proprietor of the leading saloon in Oro Fino died a few days before Bob’s arrival. He was indebted to Bob for borrowed money, calling upon the surviving partner soon after his arrival, Bob informed him of the indebtedness, and declared his intention of appropriating the saloon and its contents in payment.

“How much,” inquired the man, “did you lend my partner? I’ll settle with you, and pay liberal interest.”

“That’s not the idee,” rejoined Bob. “Do you think me fool enough to lend a fellow five hundred dollars, and then after it increases to five thousand, square the account with a return of what I lent and a little more? That’s not my way of doing biz. How much stock have you got here on hand?”

Bob carefully committed to writing the invoice verbally furnished.

“Now,” said he, putting the memorandum in his pocket, “I’ll hold you responsible for all these traps—the whole outfit. You’ve got to close up and get out of this without any delay. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to do it in. You must then deliver everything safe into my hands.”

The unfortunate saloon-keeper knew that the law as administered in that mountain town would afford him no redress. He also knew that to refuse compliance with the demand of Cherokee Bob, however unjust, would precipitate a quarrel which would probably cost him his life. So when Bob, accompanied by two or three confederates, came the next morning to the saloon to take possession, he was prepared to submit to the imposition without resistance. Walking within the bar, Cherokee Bob emptied the money drawer and gave the contents to his victim. He then invited his friends to drink to the success of the new “outfit,” and finding himself in undisturbed occupancy, increased the amount of his gift to the man he had expelled to several hundred dollars. This was the manner in which he became, as Cynthia said, “settled in business.”

CHAPTER VI
FLORENCE

Florence was now the established headquarters of the robbers. Its isolated location, its distance from the seat of government, its mountain surroundings, and, more than all, its utter destitution of power to enforce law and order, gave it peculiar fitness as a base for the criminal and bloody operations of the desperate gang which infested it. At all hours of the day and night some of them were to be seen at the two saloons kept by Cherokee Bob and Cyrus Skinner. When one company disappeared another took its place, and at no time were there less than twenty or thirty of these desperadoes at one or both of their haunts, plotting and contriving deeds of plunder and robbery which involved the hard earnings, possibly the lives, of many of the fortunate miners of the vicinity. The crowd from both East and West had arrived. The town was full of gold hunters. Expectation lighted up the countenance of every newcomer. Few had yet realized the utter despair of failure in a mining camp. In the presence of vice in all its forms, men who were staid and exemplary at home laid aside their morality like a useless garment and yielded to the seductive influences spread for their ruin. The gambling shops and hurdy-gurdy saloons—beheld for the first time by many of these fortune-seekers—lured them on step by step, until many of them abandoned all thought of the object they had in pursuit, for lives of shameful and criminal indulgence.

The condition of society thus produced was fatal to all attempts at organization, either for protection or good order. Wholly unrestrained by fear or conscience, the robbers carried on their operations in the full blaze of mid-day. Affrays were of daily occurrence, and robberies took place in the public streets. Charley Harper, the acknowledged chief, stained with the darkest crimes, walked the streets with the boldness and confidence of one who glories in his iniquity. Peaceable, honest, well-meaning citizens, completely overawed, were fortunate to escape insult or abuse, as they passed to and fro in pursuit of their occupations. Woe to the unfortunate miner who entered the town if it were known or believed that there was any treasure on his person! If not robbed on the spot, or lured into a hurdy-gurdy saloon, or cheated at a gambling table, he was waylaid by disguised ruffians on his return to his camp, and by threats and violence, or when these failed, by death itself, relieved of his hard-bought earnings. For one of these sufferers to recognize and expose any of his assailants was simply to insure death at his hands the first convenient opportunity.

One of these side exploits was marked by features of peculiar atrocity. An aged, eccentric German miner, who lived alone in a little cabin three miles from town, was supposed to have a considerable amount of gold dust concealed in his dwelling. One morning, early in August, a neighbor discovered that the house had been violently entered. The door was broken and scattered in pieces. Entering, he beheld the mangled corpse of the old man lying amid a general wreck of bedding, boxes, and trunks. The remains of a recent fire in a corner bore evidence of the failure of the design of the robbers to conceal their crime by a general conflagration. The miners were exasperated at an act of such wanton and unprovoked barbarity. A coroner’s jury was summoned and such an inquest held as men in fear of their lives dared to venture. The verdict, as might have been anticipated, was “murdered by some person or persons unknown.” Here the affair has rested ever since.

Acts of violence and bloodshed were not infrequent among the robbers themselves. Soon after the murder of the German, a company of them, who had been gambling all night at one of the saloons, broke up in a quarrel at sunrise. Before they reached the street, a revolver in the hands of Brockie was discharged, killing instantly one of the departing brawlers. The murderer surrendered himself to a justice of the peace, and escaped upon the singular plea that the shot was accidental and did not hit the person he intended to kill. One of the jury, in a letter to a friend wrote: “The verdict gave universal satisfaction, the feeling over the homicide among good citizens being that Brockie had done a good thing. If he had killed two of the ruffians instead of one, and then hung himself, good men would have been better pleased.”

Hickey, the intended victim, was one of the worst men in the band. The year following this occurrence, in a fit of anger induced by intoxication, at a store in Placerville, he made a desperate assault upon a peaceable, inoffensive individual who was known by the name of “Snapping Andy.” Hurriedly snatching a pickhandle from a barrel, Andy, by two or three well-directed blows, brought his career of crime and infamy to a bloody close.

For some reason, probably to place him beyond the reach of the friends of the murdered robber, Brockie was assigned to a new position. Ostensibly to establish a ferry at the mouth of White Bird Creek, a few miles from town, but really for the purpose of furnishing a convenient rendezvous for his companions, he took up his abode there. It was on the line of travel between Florence and a gold discovery reputed to have been made on a tributary of the Boise River.

About the middle of September, Arthur Chapman, son of the surveyor-general of Oregon, while waiting for ferriage, was brutally assaulted by Brockie, who rushed towards him with pistol and knife, swearing that he would “shoot him as full of holes as a sieve, and then cut him into sausage meat.” With an axe which he seized upon the instant, Chapman clove his skull to the chin. Brockie fell dead in his tracks, another witness to the fulfilment of that terrible denunciation, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Chapman was acquitted.

It will not be deemed out of place to record here the desperate fortune of one Matt Bledsoe, who became notorious as an independent freebooter, and killed several persons in the valley of the Upper Sacramento and Upper Willamette. His bloody character preceded his arrival at Florence in the Fall of 1861. He acknowledged no allegiance to any band, and avowed as a ruling principle that he would “as soon kill a man as eat his breakfast.” While engaged in a game of cards with a miner at a ranche on White Bird Creek in October, 1861, he provoked an altercation, but the miner being armed, he did not, as was usual with him, follow it up by an attack. The next morning, while the miner was going to the creek, Bledsoe shot and killed him. Mounting his horse he rode rapidly to Walla Walla, surrendered to the authorities, asked for a trial, and on his own statement that he “had killed a man in self-defence,” was acquitted.

A leap forward in his history to twelve o’clock of a cold winter night of 1865 finds this same villain in company with another, each with a courtesan beside him, seated at a table in an oyster saloon in Portland. Some angry words between the women soon involved the men in a quarrel, which Bledsoe brought to a speedy termination by a fatal blow upon the head of his antagonist. He was immediately arrested, tried, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for a long term of years. During the following Fall he escaped, was rearrested, and after trial, returned to prison to serve out a prolonged sentence.

Perhaps in the early history of no part of our country were greater difficulties overcome in moving from one place to another than in the mining districts of Oregon and Idaho. Essentially a mountain region, and in all portions of it away from the narrow valleys formed by the streams filled with the remains of extensive volcanic action, its surface, besides being broken into deep cañons, lofty ridges, inaccessible precipices, impassable streams, and impenetrable lava beds, was also covered everywhere with the sharp points and fissured hummocks which were cast out during a long and active period of primeval eruption. There were no natural roads in any direction. The trail of the Indian was full of obstacles, often indirect and generally impracticable. To travel with vehicles of any sort was absolutely impossible. The pack-animal was the only available resource for transportation. The miner would bind all his earthly gear on the back of a mule or a burro and grapple with obstructions as they appeared, cutting his way through forests almost interminable, and exposing himself to dangers as trying to his fortitude as to his ingenuity. The merchant who wished to transport goods, the saloon-keeper who had liquors and billiard tables, the hotel-keeper whose furniture was necessary, all had to employ pack-animals as the only means of transportation from the towns on the Columbia to the mining camps of the interior. The owner of a train of pack-animals was always certain of profitable employment. His life was precarious, his subsistence poor, his responsibilities enormous. He threaded the most dangerous passes, and incurred the most fearful risks,—for all of which he received adequate compensation.

The pack train was always a lively feature in the gigantic mountain scenery of Oregon and Idaho. A train of fifty or one hundred animals, composed about equally of mules and burros, each heavily laden, the experienced animal in the lead picking the way for those in the rear amid the rocks, escarpments, and precipices of a lofty mountain side, was a spectacle of thrilling interest. At times, the least mis-step would have precipitated some unfortunate animal hundreds of feet down the steep declivity, dashing him to pieces on the rocks below. Fortunately the cautious and sure tread of these faithful creatures rendered such an accident of very rare occurrence, though to the person who for the first time beheld them in motion the feeling was ever present that they could not escape it. The arrival of one of these large trains in a mining camp produced greater excitement among the inhabitants than any other event, and the calculations upon their departure from the Columbia River and their appearance in the interior towns were made and anticipated with nearly as much certainty as if they were governed by a published time-table.

The confidence of the owner of a train of pack-animals in their sagacity and sure-footedness relieved him of all fear of accident by travel, but he could never feel as well assured against the attacks of robbers. All the men in charge of a train were well armed and in momentary expectation of a surprise. Frequently on the return trips they were entrusted by merchants with large amounts of gold dust. Opportunities of this character seldom escaped the vigilance of the robbers,—and any defect in the police of the departing train insured an attack upon it in some of the difficult passes on its route to the river.

The packer of a train belonging to Neil McClinchey, a well-known mercantile operator of the Upper Columbia, in October, 1862, when four days out from Florence, on his return to Walla Walla, was stopped by a masked party of which Harper was supposed to be the leader, and for want of sufficient force robbed of fourteen pounds of gold. As he gave the treasure into the hands of the assailants, the villain who took it said in a consoling tone, “That’s sensible. If every man was as reasonable as you things would go along smoother.”

Shortly after this robbery, Joseph and John Berry were returning to the river with their train. They had gone but forty miles from Florence, when they were confronted by three men in masks, who, with levelled pistols, commanded them to throw up their hands. Seeing that resistance was useless they obeyed, and were relieved of eleven hundred dollars. The packers recognized the voices of David English and William Peoples,—and the third one was afterwards ascertained to be Nelson Scott. The victims returned with all possible expedition to Lewiston, where the report of their loss excited the most intense indignation.

CHAPTER VII
FIRST VIGILANCE COMMITTEE

As soon as the Berrys were assured of the identity of the villains who had robbed them they appealed to the people to assist in their capture. The robbers had stripped them of all their hard earnings, and they had the sympathy of every honest man in the community. Nothing more was needed to kindle into a flame of popular excitement the long-pent-up fires of smothered indignation. Public sentiment was clamorous for the capture and punishment of the robbers. It gathered strength day by day, until it became the all-absorbing topic everywhere. Men assembled on the street corners, in the stores, in the saloons, and at the outside mining camps to compare views and consult upon measures of relief. Meantime, several parties whose faith in immediate action was stronger than in consultation, set out in pursuit of the robbers.

From the fact that they had passed south of Lewiston it was believed they had gone down the Columbia. Distributing themselves along the different roads and trails in that direction, the pursuers made diligent search for them in every nook and corner which could afford them a hiding-place. Their diligence was successful. The robbers had separated, but were arrested in detail,—Peoples at Walla Walla, Scott on Dry Creek, near there, and English at Wallula, forty miles distant on the Columbia.

The only surprise they manifested upon being arrested was at the temerity of their captors. In a community which had so long held them in fear, any legal interference with their business was deemed by them an outrage. They did not pause to inquire whether their reign was near its termination, nor think that perhaps the people had decided as between longer submission to their villainies and condign punishment for their actual crimes. If they had, their efforts to escape would have been immediate. As it was, they rested easy, and reflected savagely upon the revenge in store for their captors after their friends had effected their rescue.

They were taken in irons to Walla Walla. Judge Smith ordered their removal to Florence for trial. Such was the indignation of the citizens of Lewiston that on their arrival there it was determined they should be tried by the people. All confidence in the law and the courts was lost. Accordingly a committee was appointed to investigate the circumstances of the robbery and declare the punishment. The prisoners were taken in charge by the committee, and confined in an unfinished building on the bank of the Clearwater, which was strongly guarded. To make their work thorough and terrify others of the band who were known to be prowling about the saloons of Lewiston, a number of persons were appointed, with instructions to effect their immediate arrest. In anticipation of this course all suspected persons except one escaped by flight. This one, known by the name of “Happy Harry,” was a simple fellow, who denied all association with the band, confessed to a few petty offences, and was discharged on condition that he would instantly leave and never return to the country. He has never been heard of since.

One of the shrewdest of the gang, George Lane, who from a personal deformity was called “Club Foot George,” well known as a robber and horse-thief, escaped arrest by surrendering himself to the commandant of Fort Lapwai (a United States post twelve miles distant), who confined him in the guard-house.

The final disposition of the three villains in custody was delayed until the next day. A strong guard of well-armed men surrounded their prison. Just after midnight the sleeping inhabitants of the town were roused by several shots fired in the direction of the place of confinement. In a few minutes the streets were filled with citizens. A former friend of Peoples, one Marshall, who kept a hotel in town, had, in attempting his rescue, fired upon the guard. In return he received a shot in his arm, and was prostrated by a blow from a clubbed musket. The cause of the mêlée being explained, the people withdrew, leaving the sentinels at their posts.

The next morning at an early hour the people gathered around the prison. The guards were gone and the door ajar. Unable to restrain their curiosity, and fearful that the robbers had been rescued, they pushed the door wide open. There, hanging by the neck, stark and cold, they beheld the bodies of the three desperadoes. Justice had been anticipated, and the first Vigilance Committee of the northern mines had commenced its work. No one knew or cared who had done it, but all felt that it was right, and the community breathed freer than at any former period of its history.

Intelligence of the execution, with the usual exaggeration, spread far and wide through the mining camps. It was received with approval by the sober citizens, but filled the robber horde with consternation. Charley Harper, while on his way from Florence to Lewiston to gather full particulars, met a mountaineer.

“Stranger,” he inquired, “what’s the news?”

“I s’pose you’ve heard about the hanging of them fellers?”

“Heard something. What’s the particulars?”

“Well, Bill Peoples, Dave English, and Nels Scott have gone in. They strung ’em up like dried salmon. Happy Harry got out of the way in time; but if they get Club Foot George, his life won’t be worth a cent. They’re after a lot more of ’em up in Florence.”

“Do you know who all they’re after?” asked Harper.

“Yes. Charley Harper’s the big chief they’re achin’ for the most, but the story now is that he’s already hanged. A feller went into town day before yesterday, and said he saw him strung up out here on Camas Prairie. Did you hear anything of it back on the road?”

Harper needed no further information. He felt that the country was too hot to hold him, and that the bloodhounds were on his track. As soon as the miner was out of sight, he turned to the right, crossed the Clearwater some miles above Lewiston, and pursued a trail to Colville on the Upper Columbia, where we will take leave of him for the present.

CHAPTER VIII
NEW GOLD DISCOVERIES

When the rumored discovery in the Summer of 1861 of extensive gold placers on Salmon River was confirmed, the intelligence spread through the Territories and Mississippi States like wildfire. Thousands of young men, thrown out of employment by the war, and other thousands who dreaded the evils which that great conflict would bring upon the nation, and still others actuated by a thirst for gain, utilized their available resources in providing means for an immediate migration to the land of promise. Before midsummer they had started on the long and perilous journey. How little did they know of its exposures! The deserts, destitute of water and grass, the alkaline plains where food and drink were alike affected by the poisonous dust, the roving bands of hostile Indians, the treacherous quicksands of river fords, the danger and difficulty of the mountain passes, the death of their companions, their cattle, and their horses, breakage of their vehicles, angry and often violent personal altercations,—all these fled in the light of the summer sun, the vernal beauty of the plains, the delightfully pure atmosphere which wooed them day by day farther away from the abode of civilization and the protection of law. The most fortunate of this army of adventurers suffered from some of these fruitful causes of disaster. So certain were they in some form to occur, that a successful completion of the journey was simply an escape from death. The story of the Indian murders and cruelties alone, which befell hundreds of these hapless emigrants, would fill volumes. Every mile of the several routes across the continent was marked by the decaying carcasses of oxen and horses, which had perished during the period of this hegira to the gold mines. Three months with mules and four with oxen were necessary to make the journey,—a journey now completed in five days from ocean to ocean by the railroad.

Some of the earliest of these expeditions, after entering the unexplored region which afterwards became Idaho and Montana, were arrested by information that it would be impossible to cross, with teams, the several mountain ranges between them and the mines. This discouragement was followed up by intelligence that the placers were overrun by a crowd of gold hunters from California and Oregon, and that large bands of prospectors were spreading over the adjacent territory. Swift on the heels of this came the rumor that new placers had been found at Deer Lodge, on the east side of the mountains.

The idea was readily adopted that the country was filled with gold placers,—that it was not necessary to pursue the track of actual discovery, but that each man could discover his own mine. Thus believing, the stream of emigration diverged,—some crossing the range to Fort Lemhi on the Lower Salmon, and others pursuing a more southerly course, with the hope of striking an old trail leading from Salt Lake to Bitter Root and Deer Lodge valleys. Some of this latter party remained on Grasshopper Creek near the large cañon, where they made promising discoveries. The others went on to Deer Lodge, but being disappointed in the placers there, rejoined their companions and gave to their placer the name of Beaver Head Diggings,—that being the name given by Lewis and Clark to the river into which the creek empties.

While these discoveries were in progress on the east side of the mountains, a prospecting party which had been organized at Florence under the leadership of a Californian by the name of Grimes, discovered the mines on the Boise River. They were one hundred and fifty miles south of Florence. Grimes and his party sunk their first shaft fifteen miles northwest of the site of Idaho City. While preparing to extend their explorations, they unfortunately fell into an Indian ambuscade and their leader was slain.

Intelligence of the Beaver Head and Boise discoveries unsettled all local projects for building up the towns of Florence, Elk City, and Oro Fino. They were immediately deserted by all who could leave without sacrifice. West Bannack, at Boise, and East Bannack, at Beaver Head, sprung into existence as if by enchantment.

Ridgely had now so far recovered from his wound as to be able to travel. Accompanied by him and Charley Reeves, Henry Plummer left the vicinity of Florence and went to Elk City. There he met with several of his old California acquaintances who were familiar with his early history. Fearful of remaining lest they should deliver him up to the authorities and cause him to be returned to California, or that a Vigilance Committee would visit him with heavier punishment, he suddenly departed, and ten days later made his appearance at Deer Lodge. He found the camp full of needy adventurers, the mines unpromising, and the chances few for replenishing his fortune by either gambling or robbery. After spending a few days of constantly increasing discouragement he started in company with Jack Cleveland for Fort Benton, intending to go down the Missouri by the first boat. Fortunate would it have been had he carried this design into execution. If it would not have saved him from a felon’s death, it would have preserved the lives of those who afterwards became his victims.

A PACK TRAIN: CINCHING

Sixty miles from Benton, their horses jaded with travel, the two men stopped at the Government farm on Sun River for a few days’ rest. In this secluded valley they were out of the way of pursuers. Carpeted with bunch grass, it afforded grazing for their half-starved horses, and in Mr. Vail, the man in charge of the farm, they found a very hospitable host. Divided centrally by the large and peaceful river, the valley stretched away on either side to numberless plateaus, remarkable for the uniform height and tabular recession with which they rose to the summits of the lofty foothills, which in their turn swelled gradually into a circumference of heaven-kissing mountains. Nothing but a few forests were wanting to make the scene one of unparalleled grandeur. These were measurably supplied by the parks of cottonwood which stretched along either bank of the river, affording shelter for the herds of elk, antelope, and deer that roamed unharmed over the boundless solitude.

Here, sheltered by the arms of kind relatives, Henry Plummer first saw the only being which inspired his bosom with virtuous love. A young, innocent, and beautiful girl, artless and loving as a child, won by his attention and gentlemanly deportment, and the tale, seductive as that poured by the serpent into the ear of Eve, which he told of his love, against the advice of her sister and friends, crowned his happiness with her heart and hand. No stories of his past career, no terrible picture of the future, no tears and petitions, could stay the sacrifice. She felt the sentiment so beautifully expressed by Moore,

“I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,

I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art,”—

and under its influence she linked her fortunes with those of the robber, murderer, and outlaw, in the holiest of human ties.

A quarrel, of which this young lady was the innocent cause, took place between Plummer and Cleveland before the marriage of the former. Their old friendship was never reëstablished. Often during their residence at Sun River an exchange of bitter epithets only relieved their pent-up wrath. Afraid of each other, neither would leave the farm alone. Accordingly they went to Bannack in company, early in the Winter of 1862–63. There we will leave them while we return to Florence to inquire after the fortunes of Cherokee Bob, whom we left a few chapters ago “settled in business.”

CHAPTER IX
DESERTION OF MINING CAMPS

The decay of a mining town is as sudden and rapid as its growth, and the causes which occasion it as problematical. Few, comparatively, of the great number of placer camps in the Rocky Mountains, once peopled with thousands, survive beyond the third year of their existence. As soon as the placers fail to remunerate the miners, they are abandoned. The crowd departs, and if any remain, it is that sober, substantial class which is satisfied with small gain as the reward of unceasing toil. Intelligence of new discoveries brought to a failing placer will cause the immediate departure of great numbers engaged in working it. These stampedes are among the most notable features of mountain life. Sometimes when the discovery of a new placer is announced, the entire population of a mining town is on the alert, each man striving with the next to be the first to reach it. Horses are saddled, mules packed, sluices abandoned, and the long and unmarked route is filled with gold hunters. Away they go, over mountains, across streams, through cañons and pine forests, with the single object of making the first selection of a claim in the new location. Not infrequently it is the case that a single company is the first to learn of the discovery of a new rich placer. If the claim it has worked is abandoned the succeeding morning, it is received by the camp as incontestable evidence that a mine of superior richness has been found,—and hundreds start in pursuit of the missing company. Rumor is a fruitful cause of stampedes. Disappointments are more frequently the consequences than rewards. Instances are common where whole camps have been deserted to follow up a rumor, been disappointed, and glad to return at last. There is nothing permanent in the life of a gold miner,—and beyond the moment, nothing strong or abiding in his associations.

“Whither he goes or how he fares,

Nobody knows and nobody cares.”

Florence had suffered from these causes. The roving portion of the population had gone, some to Boise, some to Bannack, and some to Deer Lodge. Cherokee Bob and Cynthia still remained, but Harper had fled, and Peoples, English, and Scott slept the “sleep that knows no waking.” Bill Willoughby, a suspected member of Harper’s gang, was Bob’s only companion.

The New Year was approaching. The good wives and daughters, in accordance with usual custom, proposed that it should be celebrated by a ball,—a proposition to which the other sex joyfully acceded. Extensive preparations were made for the supper, and the ball-room was attractively decorated. Cynthia made known to Bob her desire to go. He said in reply, “You shall go, and be respected as a decent woman ought to be.” So he asked Willoughby to “take his woman to the ball, and,” said he, “if things don’t go right, just report to me.” Cynthia assented to the arrangement, and Willoughby promised compliance. The guests had arrived when Cynthia, hanging on the arm of Willoughby, made her appearance. Scowls and sneers met them on every hand. A general commotion took place among the ladies. In little groups of five or six, scattered throughout the room, they whispered to each other their determination to leave if Cynthia were permitted to remain. The managers held a consultation, and Willoughby was told that he must take Cynthia home. No alternative presenting, he obeyed.

The gentlemen present were prepared to meet any further disturbance, but none occurred, and the ball passed off pleasantly. The next day Cherokee Bob marshalled his forces to avenge the insult, but was restrained by the evident preparation with which the citizens anticipated his design. He and his companions swaggered around town flourishing their pistols and bowie-knives, boasting of their prowess, but careful of giving personal offence. It would have been well for them had their resentment cooled here, but Bob’s malice was not to be satisfied so easily. Two days had passed, and Cynthia’s humiliation was unavenged. Before the close of another it must be propitiated with blood. Accordingly, the next morning it was agreed between Bob and Willoughby that they would precipitate the battle.

The most efficient leader of the citizens was a saloon-keeper by the name of Williams, familiarly called “Jakey.” He was an athletic man, and a determined enemy of the robbers, by whom he was held in great fear. He had been the hero of more than one desperate affray, and was regarded by Bob and Willoughby as the only obstacle in the way of their bloody project to kill the managers of the ball. The first act, therefore, in their contemplated tragedy was to dispose of him. Jakey at first sought to avoid them. They pursued him from house to house, till, tired of fleeing, he finally declared he would go no farther. Returning by a circuitous path, he was overtaken and fired upon by his pursuers while entering his saloon. He fired in return, and springing back, seized a loaded shotgun, and rushed into the street. Meantime, several citizens joined in the fight, which soon became general. The ruffians found themselves contending against fearful odds. Willoughby was slowly retreating with his face to his assailants, and firing as rapidly as possible. Cherokee Bob was pursuing the same strategy in an opposite direction. The twelfth fire exhausted Willoughby’s pistols. He turned to run, with Jakey in full pursuit. Exhausted from loss of blood, which was pouring from sixteen wounds, he soon fell, and, throwing up his hands, exclaimed to one of his pursuers who was in the act of firing,

“For God’s sake, don’t shoot any more. I’m dying now,” and surrendered himself to death.

Bob beat a retreat at the first fire. Dodging behind a corner, where his head only was exposed, he fired upon his pursuers until his pistols were nearly empty. While aiming for another shot, a ball fired from an opposite window brought him to the earth, mortally wounded. He was taken to his saloon, and died the third day after the affray, in the full, and to him, consolatory belief that he had killed Jakey Williams at the first fire of his revolver. He had a brother living at Lewiston. His last words were, “Tell my brother I have killed my man and gone on a long hunt.” His real name was Henry Talbert.

Cynthia was now without a protector. At Bob’s request she soon joined her old lover, Bill Mayfield, at Boise. This reunion was destined to be of short duration. The following Spring Mayfield went to Placerville, Idaho, for a brief sojourn. A quarrel over a game of cards sprung up between him and one Evans. Mayfield drew his revolver, intending to settle it by a fatal shot, but Evans interposed,

“I’m not heeled”—the mountain phrase for “I am not armed.”

“Then go and heel yourself,” said Mayfield, sheathing his revolver, “and look out the next time you meet me, for I’m bound to kill you at sight. One of us must die.”

The next day, while Mayfield and two friends were walking in the suburbs, they came upon a muddy spot, across which a narrow plank had been laid. This necessitated crossing it in single file. Mayfield was in the centre. Evans was in a cabin beside the crossing, but a few feet distant. Seizing a double-barrelled shotgun, he fired upon Mayfield from his place of concealment, through an open window. Mayfield grasped for his revolver, but fell without power to draw it, exclaiming “I’m shot.” He died in two hours, illustrating in his demise the Scriptural axiom, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Evans was immediately arrested, but escaped from jail that night, and being furnished with a horse by a friend, fled the country, and was never apprehended.

After Mayfield’s death Cynthia entered upon that career of promiscuous infamy which is the certain destiny of all women of her class. It is written of her that “she has been the cause of more personal collisions and estrangements than any other woman in the Rocky Mountains.”

CHAPTER X
BOONE HELM

Some men are villains by nature, others become so by circumstances. Hogarth’s series of pictures representing in contrast the career of two apprentices illustrates this truth better than words. Both commenced life under the same influences. The predominance of good and evil is exhibited by the natural tendency of one to overcome all unfavorable circumstances by close application to business and by virtuous associations, and of the other to idleness, vicious indulgences, and corrupt companionship. The one becomes Lord Mayor of London, and in the discharge of official duty passes sentence of death upon the other.

The wretch I am now about to introduce to the reader was one of those hideous monsters of depravity whom neither precept nor example could have saved from a life of crime. Boone Helm was a native of Kentucky. His parents emigrated to one of the newest settlements in Missouri while he was a boy. The rough pursuits of border-life were congenial to his tastes. He excelled in feats of physical strength, and delighted in nothing more than a quarrel which brought his prowess into full display. He was an inordinate drinker, and when excited by liquor gave way to all the evil passions of his nature. One of the exploits recorded of him was that of hurling his bowie-knife into the ground and regaining it with his horse at full speed. On one occasion, while the circuit court was in session, the sheriff attempted to arrest him. Helm resisted the officer, but urging his horse up the stairs into the court-room, astonished the judge by demanding with profane emphasis what he wanted of him.

In the year 1848 he married a respectable girl, but neither her affection nor the infant daughter born to him a year later could prevail with him to abandon his vicious and profligate habits. His wife sought security from his ill-treatment in divorce, which was readily granted. This freed him from family responsibilities, and he at once determined to emigrate either to Texas or California. Littlebury Shoot, a neighbor, while Helm was intoxicated, had, for pacific purposes, promised to accompany him,—intending when he was sober to avoid the fulfilment of the promise by explanation. Helm was told of his intention. He called upon Shoot, who had retired, and meeting him at the door of his house, with his left hand on his shoulder, in a friendly tone thus addressed him:

“So, Littlebury, you’ve backed down on the Texas question, have you?”

Shoot attempted an explanation, but was stopped by the peremptory demand:

“Well, are you going or not? Say yes or no.”

“No!”

At the utterance of this reply, Helm buried his bowie-knife in the breast of the unfortunate man, who, without a struggle, fell dead at his feet. Mounting his horse immediately, Helm rode away. The brother of the victim and a few resolute friends followed in pursuit. They tracked him through several neighborhoods and captured him by surprise at an Indian reservation, and returned him to Monroe County for trial. He was convicted of murder; but his conduct was such while in confinement as to raise serious doubts of his sanity. After his conviction, under the advice of physicians he was consigned to the lunatic asylum, his conduct meantime being that of a quiet, inoffensive lunatic. His keeper, finding him harmless, indulged him so far as to accompany him on daily walks into the country surrounding the institution. On one occasion, on some urgent pretence, Helm asked permission to enter a willow copse, which was readily granted. Afterwards the desire to enter this copse whenever he approached it seemed to take the form of mania. Suspecting no ulterior design, his keeper indulged him. One day, meeting a friend near the spot, the keeper, during Helm’s absence, engaged in conversation. Time passed unnoticed at first, but as the stay of Helm was prolonged, the keeper, fearing some accident had befallen him, made a rapid search through the thicket. But the bird had flown. His stratagem was successful. He was never afterward seen in Missouri, but upon his escape he fled immediately to California. Several persons were killed by him while there, in personal rencontre. At length he committed actual premeditated murder, but escaped arrest by flight. In the Spring of 1858 he arrived at Dalles, Oregon. Fearful of a requisition for his return to California, Helm, in company with Dr. Wm. H. Groves, Elijah Burton, Wm. Fletcher, John Martin, —— Field, and —— McGranigan, attempted a journey on horseback to Camp Floyd, Utah, sixty miles southwest of Salt Lake City, by way of Fort Hall. A ride of several days brought them to the Grand Ronde River. During that time they had become sufficiently acquainted with each other to banish all those feelings of distrust natural among strangers in a new country. Helm, who to his criminal qualities added the usual concomitant of being a loud-mouthed braggart, while narrating his exploits said in a boastful tone to McGranigan:

“Many’s the poor devil I’ve killed, at one time or another,—and the time has been that I’ve been obliged to feed on some of ’em.”

“Yes,” replied McGranigan, casting a sinister glance at Groves, “and we’ll have more of that feasting yet.”

The cold sincerity with which these words were uttered struck a chill to the heart of Groves, which experienced no relief when a few moments afterwards Helm proposed a plan for organizing a band of Snake Indians, and returning with them on a predatory excursion against the Walla Wallas.

“The Walla Wallas,” said he, “own about four thousand horses. With such a band of Snakes as we can easily organize for the enterprise, we can run off two thousand of the best of those animals, and after dividing with the Indians, take ours to Salt Lake and dispose of them to advantage.”

Groves, who had heard enough to satisfy him that a longer stay with this company would be accompanied by risks for which he had neither inclination nor fitness, mounted his horse at a late hour that night, and spurred back to the Dalles as rapidly as possible. On his arrival he sent intelligence to the chief of the Walla Wallas of Helm’s contemplated foray, warning them to keep a careful watch upon their horses. His plans being frustrated, Helm remained in the vicinity till Autumn, when, in company with his five companions, he continued his journey to Camp Floyd. Five hundred miles of this route lay through a wilderness of mountains, unmarked by a trail and filled with hostile Indians. It was late in October when the party left Grand Ronde River. The mountains were covered with snow. Cold weather had set in for a season whose only changes for the next six months would be a steady increase of severities. The thermometer, seldom above, often marked a temperature thirty or forty degrees below zero in the mountains. The passes were snowed up to the depths of twenty and thirty feet. Wild game, however abundant in Summer, had retreated to the forests and fastnesses for food and shelter. Snow-storms and sharp winds were blinding and incessant. Deep ravines, lofty mountains, beetling crags, and dismal cañons, alternated with impenetrable pine forests, inaccessible lava beds, and impassable torrents, encumbered every inch of the way. Death on the scaffold or escape through this terrible labyrinth gave the alternative small advantage of the penalty. Small as it was, Helm and his companions took the risk and plunged into the mountain wilderness. He alone escaped.

In the absence of other narratives of this remarkable adventure, I record his own, as detailed to John W. Powell in April of the following year. Mr. Powell says:

“N. P. Langford,

“Dear Sir: On the tenth of April, 1859, I was on my way from Fort Owen, Bitter Root Valley, to Salt Lake City. My party consisted of one American named James Misinger, a Frenchman called ‘Grand Maison,’ a French half-breed named Antoine, and three Indians.

“I had crossed the Snake River just above Fort Hall, pitched my lodge, and was entering to indulge in a brief sleep, when I heard some one outside ask in a loud tone of voice, ‘Who owns this shebang?’ Stepping to the door and looking out, I saw a tall, cadaverous, sunken-eyed man standing over me, dressed in a dirty, dilapidated coat and shirt and drawers, and moccasins so worn that they could scarcely be tied to his feet. Having invited him in and inquired his business, he told me substantially the following:

“His name was Boone Helm. In company with five others he had left Dalles City, Oregon, in October, 1858, intending to go to Camp Floyd, Utah Territory. Having reached the Raft River, they were attacked by a party of Digger Indians, with whom they maintained a running fight for several miles, but none of the party was killed or severely wounded. Late in the evening they reached the Bannack River, where they camped, picketed their horses near by, and stationed two sentinels. During the night one of the sentinels was killed, the savage who committed the deed escaping on a horse belonging to the party.

“Upon consultation, it was decided that they had better leave that place as soon as possible. The sky at the time was overcast with storm-clouds, and soon after they got into their saddles the weather culminated in a snowstorm, which increased in violence until it became terrific. Finally, being unable to see anything but sheets of snow, they became bewildered, and knew not in what direction they were proceeding. Morning brought no relief. In the midst of an ocean of snow, they were as oblivious of locality in daylight as if total darkness had encompassed them. They knew they were somewhere between Ross’s Fork and the Bear River, and this was their most definite knowledge.

“At last they reached Soda Springs on Bear River, where familiar landmarks came in view. They then travelled up that river until they reached Thomas’s Fork, where they were forced to stop, from the lean and exhausted condition of their horses and the depth of the snow. Here they found a very comfortable cabin, and perforce went into winter quarters.

“Their provisions soon being all gone they commenced subsisting on their horses, killing one after another, until they had eaten them all but a celebrated race-horse which had been valued on the Upper Columbia at over a thousand dollars. Seeing now that they must all perish unless they soon reached a point where supplies could be obtained, the race-horse had to share the fate of the others. His meat was ‘jerked’ or hastily dried, that they might the more conveniently carry it on their backs. They then made snowshoes of the hides of the horses, and started back towards, and aimed to reach, Fort Hall, where they supposed they would meet with human beings of some kind, white men, half-breeds, or Indians.

“The party kept together until they had got beyond Soda Springs, where some had become so exhausted they could scarcely travel,—and their meat getting frightfully small in amount, Helm and a man named Burton concluded not to endanger their own lives by waiting for the wearied ones, so they left them behind.

“The two finally reached the Snake River, and moved down it in search of Fort Hall, having nothing to eat but the prickly-pear plant. When they had reached the site of Cantonment Loring, Burton, starving, weary, and snow-blind, was unable to proceed; and a good vacant house being there, Helm left him, and continued on for Fort Hall.

“Reaching the fort, he found it without an occupant. He then returned and reached Burton about dark. When out in the willows hard by, procuring firewood, he heard the report of a pistol. Running back into the house, he found Burton had committed suicide by shooting himself. He then concluded to try and find his way into Salt Lake Valley. Cutting off, well up in the thigh, Burton’s remaining leg (he had eaten the other), he rolled the limb up in an old red flannel shirt, tied it across his shoulder, and started.

“About eight miles out he met an Indian going in his lodge. He entreated the savage to take him along; but the Indian said he had nothing himself to eat, and that his family were starving. Helm exhibited handfuls of gold coin, when the Indian consented to his accompanying him.

“He remained at this lodge about two weeks, paying the Indian ten dollars a meal. His food consisted of ants and an unpalatable herb, called in the mountains the ‘tobacco plant.’

“The above facts Helm gave me with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘I will give you all I have in the world,—which is only nine dollars,—to take me to the settlements.’ I told him I did not desire money for helping a man in his condition.

“That same evening the Indian with whom Helm had been stopping, visited me. His name was Mo-quip. I had known him for several years. He fully corroborated Helm’s story, in regard to the carrying and eating the body of his companion. ‘When I first tasted of the flesh,’ said Mo-quip in his own tongue, ‘I knew not what it was, but told the stranger it was bueno[^[1]] game,—better than I had myself. The stranger then took hold of one of the corners of a red shirt that was around his pack, and jerked it up, when a white man’s leg, the lower end ragged from gnawing, rolled out on the ground.’ Altogether Helm had paid Mo-quip two hundred and eighty dollars.

[1]. Good.

“Having given him a new suit of buckskin, and furnished him with a horse, he set out with my party for Salt Lake City. Just after pitching my lodge the first evening after starting with him, ‘Grand Maison,’ very much frightened, came to me with a sack of gold coin which he said Helm had asked him to conceal until they reached Salt Lake City. I took the money and counted it—it amounted to fourteen hundred dollars.

“Though satisfied there was something wrong, I said nothing, and took Helm on to the settlements. Having ascertained in the meantime that he was the worst kind of a desperado, I called him to me as soon as we had reached the end of the journey, and handed him his money, saying, ‘You can now take care of yourself.’ He coolly put the coin in his pocket, without expressing a syllable of thankfulness for the assistance I had rendered him.

“It was not long until he had squandered all he had in gambling and drinking, and was finally expelled from Salt Lake Valley for his atrocities.

“Hoping these facts may be of service to you, allow me to subscribe myself,

Your obt. servant,

“John W. Powell.”

We have good reason for believing that before Helm fled from Salt Lake City he murdered, in cold blood, two citizens, at the instigation of some of the leading Mormons, who, after the deed was done, concealed him, and finally aided in his escape from arrest. Certain it is that after leaving there he travelled through southern Utah, and by a long circuit reached San Francisco, whence he returned by water to the Dalles in Oregon.

Here he engaged in fresh villainies. Several murders which were committed along the route leading from the Columbia River to the gold mines were laid to his charge. At one time, in Washington Territory, he stole a herd of horses which he sold at Vancouver’s Island. In this course of varied and hardened crime he passed his time till the Spring of 1862,—with his usual good fortune escaping detection or arrest. In June of that year he made his appearance in Florence, where he soon found, among the roughs, congenial associates.

A man of that mixed character which united the qualities of a gambler, a skilful pugilist, and an honest, straightforward miner in his single person, known only as “Dutch Fred,” at this time enjoyed a local notoriety in Florence which had won for him among his comrades the appellation of “Chief.” He was neither a rowdy nor desperado, and in ordinary deal, honest and generous; but he gambled, drank, and when roused, was a perfect Hercules in a fight. Helm, having been plied with liquor, at the request of an enemy of Fred’s sought him out for the purpose of provoking a fight. Entering the saloon where Fred was seated at a faro table, Helm, with many oaths and epithets and flourishes of his revolver, challenged Fred to an immediate deadly combat. Fred sprung up, drew his knife, and was advancing to close with the drunken braggart, when the by-standers interfered, and deprived both of their weapons, which they entrusted to the keeping of the saloon-keeper, and Fred returned quietly to his game.

Helm apologized, and expressed regret for his conduct, and left the saloon. A few hours afterwards he returned. Fred was still there. Stepping up to the saloon-keeper, Helm asked for his revolver, promising that he would immediately depart and make no disturbance. No sooner was it returned to him than he turned towards Fred, and uttering a diabolical oath, fired at him while seated at the table. The ball missed, and before the second fire, Fred, unarmed, with his arms folded across his breast, stood before his antagonist, who, with deadlier aim, pierced his heart. He fell dead upon the spot. Helm cocked his pistol, and looking towards the stupefied crowd, exclaimed,

“Maybe some more of you want some of this!”

As no one deigned a reply, he walked coolly away.

If Helm was arrested for this murder, he escaped; for the next we hear of him, he was captured on Frazer River in the Fall of 1862, as will appear from the following extract from a British Columbia paper:

“The man, Boone Helm, to whom we referred some weeks since, has at last been taken. He was brought into this city last night strongly ironed. The first clue of the detectives was the report that two men had been seen trudging up the Frazer River on foot, with their blankets and a scanty supply of provisions on their backs. The description of one corresponded with the description given by the American officers of Boone Helm. Helm’s conduct on the road is conclusive evidence that he was aware he was being pursued. He passed around the more populous settlements, or through them in the night time. When overtaken, he was so exhausted by fatigue and hunger that it would have been impossible for him to continue many hours longer. He made no resistance to the arrest,—in fact, he was too weak to do so,—and acknowledged without equivocation or attempt at evasion that he was Boone Helm. Upon being asked what had become of his companion, he replied with the utmost sang froid:

“‘Why, do you suppose that I’m a —— fool enough to starve to death when I can help it? I ate him up, of course.’

“The man who accompanied him has not been seen or heard of since, and from what we have been told of this case-hardened villain’s antecedents, we are inclined to believe he told the truth. It is said this is not the first time he has been guilty of cannibalism.”

While on his return for trial in the Spring of 1863, leave was obtained from the proper authorities at Portland, Oregon, to confine him in the penitentiary there until provision could be made to secure him safely at Florence. There I will leave him for the present, as, after accompanying me thus far through the horrible narrative of his adventures, my readers doubtless, now that he is fairly within the sharp fangs of the law, hope soon to learn that justice has finally overtaken him, and that the world is freed from his further depredations.

Three brothers of Boone Helm came to the Pacific coast between 1848 and 1850. They all died violent deaths. At the time of the return of Boone Helm to Florence for trial for the murder of Dutch Fred, one of these brothers, familiarly called “Old Tex,” was engaged in mining in the Boise diggings, two hundred miles south of Florence. He had a good reputation for honesty, liberality, and courage. He was, moreover, a man of eccentric character. It is told of him that in one of the mining towns he threatened to shoot on sight a person with whom he had a personal difficulty. His enemy hearing of this, swore to reciprocate the intention upon the first opportunity. A chance soon after offering to carry his threat into execution, he said to Old Tex, as he presented his pistol to fire,

“Tex, I heard that you said that you’d shoot me on sight.”

Looking around, Tex replied, “Well, didn’t you say you would shoot me, too?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, why don’t you do it then? All you’ve got to do is to pull that trigger, and that’s the last of Old Tex.”

This stoical bravery won the admiration of the man and defeated his bloody purpose.

“Tex,” said he, “I don’t want to kill you.”

“Do you mean that?” asked Tex.

“I do.”

“That suits me,” replied Tex, “let’s go and take a drink.” And thus their enmity ended in making them fast friends. Tex was killed by being thrown from a wild horse, in Walla Walla, in the year 1865.

It was to this brother that Boone Helm, when he found all hope of escape at an end, applied for assistance. True to the fraternal instinct, Tex promptly responded, and soon made his appearance in Florence, with a heavy purse. He soon satisfied himself that unless the testimony could be suppressed, the trial must result in conviction; and to this object he immediately addressed himself. Some of the witnesses had left the country. Tex succeeded in buying up all that remained, except one. He wanted an extravagant sum. Tex finally agreed to pay it, if he would at once leave the country and never return. The extortionist accepted the conditions. Fixing his cold, gray eye on him, Tex, as he handed him the money, said: “Now, remember, if you do not fulfil the last condition of the bargain, you will have me to meet.”

Shylock knew the character of the man too well to trifle with him.

The day of trial came, no witnesses appeared, the case was dismissed, and the red-handed murderer and cannibal was again at liberty to prowl for fresh victims. The truehearted brother who had purchased his life, as soon as he was free, took him kindly by the hand, and in a voice choked with emotion, said to him,

“Now, Boone, if you want to work and make an honest living, go down to Boise with me. I have plenty of mining ground, and you can do well for yourself:—but if you must fight, and nothing else will do you, I will give you an outfit to go to Texas, where you can join the Confederate armies, and do something for your country.”

Boone accompanied his brother to Boise, and for a while engaged in mining, but it was not a congenial occupation. He soon signified his desire to go to Texas, and Old Tex, true to his promise, furnished him clothing, a horse, and a well-filled purse. He set out in quest of new adventures, but, as we shall see hereafter, did not go to Texas.

CHAPTER XI
DEATH OF CHARLEY HARPER

We return now to Charley Harper, whom we left at Colville on the Upper Columbia, a fugitive from the Vigilantes of Florence. Fear had exercised a healthful restraint upon his conduct, and during the brief period that had elapsed since his flight, though by no means a model citizen, he had been guilty of no offences of an aggravated character. He was, however, known to be a favorite with the roughs, a gambler, a drunkard, and a man of desperate resources. Good men shunned and watched him. Had there been a Vigilante organization in existence then, he would have received its closest observation. But in a condition of society where all classes intermingled, he contrived to slip along without molestation.

New Year’s Day brought with it the customary ball, to which all were invited. The preparations were on a scale commensurate with the wishes and means of the miners, who generally, upon such occasions, spare no expense while their money holds out. Everybody in the town was in attendance, Charley Harper among the number. Attracted at an early hour of the evening by the sparkling eyes and voluptuous person of a half-breed woman, he devoted to her his entire attention, dancing with her often, and bestowing upon her many unmistakable civilities. As the evening wore on, Charley became boisterous, swaggering, and noisy. His inamorata declined his further attentions, and refused his hand for a dance. Incensed to madness by this act, crazy with liquor, he knocked her down, and beat and kicked her in a most inhuman manner after she had been prostrated. This roused the indignation of the by-standers, and Charley, seeing vengeance in their demonstrations, fled in terror before them. They pursued him through the streets, he retreating and firing upon them until he had emptied his revolver. The pursuit ended in his capture, a rope was procured, and a few moments afterwards the lifeless form of the wretched desperado was swinging in the cold night wind from a limb of the tree nearest the place of his arrest. Thus ended the life of one who, among his own associates, bore the name of being the meanest scoundrel of their gang.

After the affray which terminated in the death of Cherokee Bob and Willoughby, the Vigilantes of Florence met, passed congratulatory resolutions, and renewed their measures for the effective suppression of crime in their midst. Their Executive Committee was instructed to warn all suspicious characters to leave the place immediately,—and they determined to visit with condign punishment those who disobeyed. The leading men among the offenders had fled in anticipation of some public demonstration, so that those who remained were few and powerless. Among these was a tall, lean, cadaverous individual, derisively called “Fat Jack,” who, like Happy Harry, belonged to that class of negative scoundrels, whose love for crime is confined by fear to petty thefts. Fat Jack obeyed the order to leave, and went to Walla Walla. Brooding over his expulsion with increasing indignation, and encouraged in the belief that he could return without molestation, after a short period he went back to Florence, muttering by the way violent threats against those who had banished him. Two months had elapsed since his hegira. It was late in the afternoon of a cold, stormy, March day when he entered the town. At his first appearance he was promptly waited upon by the members of the Executive Committee, who ordered him to retrace his steps at once, or he would be hanged. Hard as this order may seem to the casual reader, to have neglected it would have endangered the efficiency of the committee and opened a way for a return of the roughs to their old haunts.

The poor wretch turned his face to the storm, and wandered through the darkness, sleet, and wind, despairingly, from cabin to cabin, in search of food and lodging. Every door was closed against him, and he was rudely and unpityingly told to “Be gone,” by all from whom he sought relief. At a distance of four miles from Florence he stopped at a late hour of the night at the door of a worthy man by the name of Neselrode. Jack answered frankly the old man’s questions. Neselrode admitted him, gave him supper, and a bed by his cabin fireside. A hired man was the only other occupant of the house.

At a later hour of the night, two men roused Mr. Neselrode, and demanded the person of Fat Jack. Neselrode, on being told that they had no authority, refused to surrender him to an irresponsible party, as to do so would be on his part a violation of the laws of hospitality. His refusal was followed by the instant discharge of two double-barrelled shotguns which riddled the door with buckshot, and stretched in death-throes both the kind-hearted host and his criminal guest. The one surviving man threw open the door, and bade the dastardly ruffians to enter, telling them the murderous effects of their shots. They availed themselves of the darkness to flee without recognition. None of the citizens of Florence were more indignant when told of this cruel assassination than the Vigilantes themselves. A meeting was held denouncing the perpetrators, and pledging the citizens to the adoption of every possible means for their early detection and punishment. Alas! the criminals remain to this day undiscovered. They belonged, doubtless, to that class of officious individuals, of whom there are many in the mining camps, who in point of moral character and actual integrity are but a single remove from the criminals themselves,—men who live a cheating, gambling, dissipated life, and seek a cover for their own iniquities by the energy and vindictiveness with which they pursue others accused of actual guilt. If the various protective societies which at one time and another have sprung up in the mining regions to preserve peace and good order are liable to any charge of wrong, it was their neglect to punish those men who used the organization to promote their own selfish purposes, and in the name of Vigilante justice committed crimes which on any principle of ethics were wholly indefensible. The fact that in some instances wrongs of this kind have occurred, only adds to the proof, that in all forms of society, whether governed by permanent or temporary laws, there are always a few who are adroit and cunning enough to escape merited punishment.

CHAPTER XII
PINKHAM AND PATTERSON

No two men filled a broader space in the early history of the Florence mines than Pinkham and Patterson. Their personal characteristics gave them a widespread notoriety, and a sort of local popularity, which each enjoyed in his separate sphere. They were both leaders, after their own fashion, in the heterogeneous society in which they moved, and he was deemed a bold man who would gainsay their opinions, or resist their enterprises.

They were both gamblers, and lived the free and easy life of that pursuit; a pursuit which, in a new mining camp, next to that of absolute ruffianism, enabled its votaries to exercise a power as unlimited as it is generally lawless and insurrectionary. Indeed, there it is the master vice, which gives life and support to all the other vices, and that surrounds and hedges them in.

The order of influences which govern and direct the social element of a mining camp in its infancy is exactly the reverse of those which govern and direct the social element of an Eastern village. The clergyman, the church, and the various little associations growing out of it, which make the society of our New England villages so delightful, and, at the same time, so disciplinary and instructive, are superseded in a new mining community by the gambling saloon, cheap whiskey, frail women, and all the evils necessarily flowing from such polluted combinations. In the one case, religion and morality stand in the foreground, protected by the spirit of wise and inflexible laws; in the other, the rifle, the pistol, and the bowie-knife are flourished by reckless men, whose noblest inspirations are excited by liquor and debauchery. While all that is good and true and pure in society is brought into unceasing action in the one case, all that is vile and false and polluted reigns supreme in the other. We look to the one condition of society for all great and good examples of humanity, and to the other for such as are of an opposite character.

If we are to credit the early history of New England, Miles Standish was a central character of Puritanic chivalry and fidelity. The people had faith in his Christian character, and entire confidence in his strong arm and fertility of expedients in the hour of danger. Some such sentiment, qualified by the wide difference in the moral character of the two men, attached the mining community of Florence to Pinkham. He was a bold, outspoken, truthful, self-reliant man, without a particle of braggadocio or bluster, careful always to say what he meant, and to do what he said. Fear was a stranger to him, and desperate chances never found him without desperate means.

Pinkham was a native of Maine, and physically a fine type of the stalwart New Englander. In stature he was more than six feet, and in weight upwards of two hundred pounds. To the agility of a mountain cat he added the quick, sharp eye of an Indian and the strength of a giant. Trained by years of frontier exposure, he was skilled in the ready use of all defensive weapons. When aroused, the habitual frown upon his brow gathered into a fierce scowl, and the steely gray eyes fairly blazed in their sockets. At such times he was dangerous, because it was his custom to settle all disputes with a word and a blow, and the blow always came first. The intensity of his nature could not brook altercation.

Pinkham had been an adventurer ever since the discovery of gold in California. He was among the first of that great army of fortune-seekers which braved the perils of an overland trip to that distant El Dorado in 1849. If, before he left his New England home, no blight had fallen upon his moral nature, it is certain that soon after his arrival in the land of gold his character took the form which it ever afterwards wore, of a gambler and desperado. In this there was nothing strange, as he was but one victim in a catastrophe that wrecked the characters of thousands. The estimate is small, which places at one-half the number of the early Pacific gold-seekers, those who fell victims to the moral ruin of life in the mining camp. It was the fruitful nursery of all those desperate men, who, after years of bloody experience, expiated their crimes upon the impromptu scaffolds of the Vigilantes, or in some of the violent brawls which their own recklessness had excited. Pinkham’s pursuits in California were those of the professional gambler. At one time he kept a common dance-house in Marysville. It is fair, in the absence of facts, to presume that his life in the Golden State was a preparatory foreground for the one which followed in the mountains of Washington Territory. He was among the first, in 1862, who were lured to that Territory by the reports of extensive gold discoveries. Among the desperate, reckless, and motley crowd that assembled at Florence immediately after the discovery of the mines, was Pinkham, with his faro boards and monte cards, “giving the boys a chance for a tussle with the tiger and the leopard.” It was not long until he became a central figure in the camp. The wild, undisciplined, pleasure-seeking population, attracted by the outspoken boldness and self-assertion of the man, quietly submitted to the influence which such characteristics always command. And no man better understood his power over his followers, or exercised it more warily, than Pinkham. The reputation which he enjoyed, of being a bold, chivalric, fearless man, ready for any emergency, however desperate, gained for him the favor of every reckless adventurer who shared in his general views of the race.

Unlike most of the gamblers and roughs, who for the most part sympathized with the Confederates, Pinkham was an intense Union man. He never lost an opportunity to proclaim his attachment for the Union cause, and denounced as traitors all who opposed it. No fear of personal injury restrained him in the utterance of his patriotic sentiments, and as he always avowed a readiness to fight for them, his opponents were careful to afford him no opportunity. At every election in Idaho City after the organization of the Territory, he was found at the polls surrounded by a set of plucky fellows armed to the teeth, ready at his command for any violent collisions with secessionists that the occasion might arouse. His tall form, rendered more conspicuous by the loud and inspiring voice with which, to the cries of “negro worshippers,” “abolitionists,” and “Lincoln hirelings,” he shouted back “secessionists,” “copperheads,” “rebels,” and “traitors,” was always the centre of a circle of men who would oppose force to force and return shot for shot.

On his return to Idaho City from a business visit to the States, a few days before the anniversary of our national independence of the year in which he was killed, he was so indignant that no preparations had been made for a celebration, that when the day arrived he procured a National flag, hired a drummer and fifer, and followed them, waving the banner, through the streets of the town, greatly to the disgust of the secessionists. The South had just been conquered, and the demonstration wore the appearance of exultation, but no one aggrieved by it had the hardihood to interrupt its progress. “Old Pink,” as he was familiarly called, was much too dangerous a character to meddle with.

With all his rough and desperate characteristics, Pinkham had no sympathy for the robbers and murderers and thieves that swarmed around him; and when Idaho was organized the governor of the Territory appointed him sheriff of Boise County. Soon afterwards he received the appointment of United States marshal, an office which made him and his friends in some measure the representatives of law and order. By promptly discharging the duties of these offices, he was held in great fear by the criminal population of the Territory, and won the respect of the best citizens for his efficiency and fidelity.

Patterson was a native of Tennessee, whence, in boyhood, he had gone with his parents to Texas and grown to manhood among the desperate and bloody men of that border State. His character, tastes, and pursuits were formed by early association with them. He was a gambler by profession, but of a nature too impulsive to depend upon it as a means of livelihood. When he came to California, he turned his attention to mining, alternating that pursuit with gambling, as the inclination seized him. Like Pinkham, he was a man of striking presence,—in stature six feet, and of weight to correspond, with a fair complexion, light hair streaked with gray, sandy whiskers, and, when unaffected by liquor or passion, a sad, reflective countenance lit up by calm but expressive blue eyes. His habitual manner was that of quiet, gentlemanly repose;—and to one unacquainted with his characteristics, he would never have been suspected of a fondness for any kind of excitement. In conversation he was uniformly affable when sober, and bore the reputation of being a very genial and mirth-loving companion when engaged with others in any exploring or dangerous enterprise. He was brave to a fault, and perfectly familiar with all the exposures and extremes of border life,—as ready to repair the lock of a gun or pistol as to use those weapons in attack or defence. His kindness and thoughtfulness for the comfort of any of his party in the event of sickness, and the resources with which he overcame obstacles in the numerous expeditions of one kind and another in which he participated, made him a great favorite with all who knew him, and gave him a commanding power over the society in which he moved. He was naturally a leader of those with whom he associated. Had these been his only characteristics, Patterson would have been one of the most useful men in the mining regions,—but whiskey always transformed him into a demon. Patterson was not a steady drinker, but gave himself up to occasional seasons of indulgence. He was one of that large class of drinkers who cannot indulge their appetites at all without going through all the stages of excitement, to complete exhaustion. From the moment he entered upon one of these excesses to its close, he was dangerous. The whole man was changed. His calm, blue eye looked like a heated furnace and was suggestive of a thirst for blood. His quiet and gentlemanly manner disappeared. His breath was labored, and his nostrils dilated like those of an enraged buffalo. He remembered, on these occasions, every person who had ever offended him, and sought the one nearest to him to engage him in quarrel. His whole bearing was aggressive and belligerent, and his best friends always avoided him until he became sober.

His unfortunate propensity for liquor had involved him in several serious affrays before he came to the Idaho mines. On one occasion, in Southern Oregon, a man who had suffered injury at his hands, while on a drunken spree shot him in the side by stealth. Patterson with the quickness of lightning drew his revolver, and fired upon and wounded his assailant. Both fell, and Patterson, believing the wound he had received would prove fatal, fired all the remaining charges in his pistol at his antagonist, and then called for his friends to take off his boots.

The original expression, “he will die with his boots on some day,” uttered many years ago as the prediction of some comical miner that a murderer would be hanged or come to his death by violence, has grown into a fantastic belief among the reckless and bloodthirsty ruffians of the Pacific coast. Patterson, who shared in this faith, intended, by having his boots taken off, to signify to those around him that he had never been guilty of murder. When we consider that of the great number of those who in the early history of the mining regions were guilty of murder, nineteen at least of every twenty have expiated their crimes upon the scaffold or in bloody affrays, the faith in this frontier axiom seems not to be greatly misplaced: but why it should be any more potent as a human prediction than as the stern edict of the Almighty denounced against the murderer four thousand years ago, I leave for the solution of those modern thinkers who build their belief outside the lids of the Bible.

Another bloody rencontre in which Patterson was engaged was with one Captain Staples in Portland, Oregon. Staples, an ardent Unionist, boisterously patriotic from liquor, insisted that all around him should join in a toast to Lincoln and the Union arms. Patterson refused, and an unpleasant altercation followed, but the parties separated without collision. Later in the evening they met, and the difficulty was renewed, and in the fight Staples was killed. Patterson was tried and acquitted; and became, in consequence of the quarrel and trial, a great favorite and champion among the secessionists of Portland.

Some time after this, in a drunken frenzy he scalped a disreputable female acquaintance. His own version of this affair was as follows: “I was trying,” said he, “to cut off a lock of her hair with my bowie-knife, but she wouldn’t keep her head still, and I made a mistake, and got part of her scalp with the hair.” For this act he was arrested and recognized to await the action of the grand jury; but before the term of court he left the State, and his bondsmen were compelled to pay the forfeiture.

Patterson came to Idaho with the first discovery of gold in that section. His fellow-gamblers, who never failed, with one hand, to take advantage of his unskilful playing, were always ready to contribute to his necessities with the other. If he wanted money to stock a faro bank they furnished it. If a saloon-keeper needed a man who united popularity and strength to arrest the encroachments of the roughs, he was ever ready to share a liberal portion of his profits with Patterson for such services. The difference between Pinkham and Patterson was that, while the friends of the former looked to him for aid in their embarrassments, those of the latter afforded him the means of existence.

About a year before the occurrence of the bloody affray between these men, Patterson and some of his friends, during a period of drunken excitement, took unlawful possession of a brewery in Idaho City, and engaged in the manufacture of beer. Pinkham was the only person in the city brave enough to undertake their arrest. When he entered the building for the purpose, he informed Patterson of his object and was met with violent resistance. In the struggle Pinkham was successful, and Patterson was arrested and taken away. The citizens, knowing the character of Patterson, and expecting nothing less than a shooting affray as the consequence of the arrest, were surprised at his submission. It was soon understood, however, that the bad blood provoked by the incident had severed all friendly relations between the champions, and that Patterson would avail himself of the first opportunity to avenge himself. Months passed away without any collision. The subject, if not forgotten, was lost sight of as other occurrences more or less exciting transpired.

On the day he was killed, Pinkham, with an acquaintance, rode out to the Warm Springs, a favorite bathing resort two miles distant from Idaho City. Meeting there with several friends, he drank more freely than usual and became quite hilarious.